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Subject:Re: Content of Help Systems From:Brian Gordon <elasticsoul2003 -at- yahoo -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:48:03 -0400 (EDT)
I'm currently creating HTML Help and a User's Guide
for consumer software. The User's Guide will be PDF
and will contain more information about why users
should use this product, its features and benefits,
what it does, etc. That is because the User's Guide
may inform part of the purchase decision, or otherwise
convince the user of the value of installing and using
the software properly.
The HTML Help assumes that the user has purchased and
is using the product, and has opened Help to find the
answer to a problem, so it is light on marketing and
background info.
All the best,
Brian
--- M Parcell <mbtechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> We deliver both user guides (online only)
> and help systems. Some people maintain that these
> two
> mediums should have different kinds of information
> (e.g., the user guides should contain background and
> conceptual information as well as task-based
> information while help systems should contain
> primarily task-based information but little
> conceptual
> information). Others maintain that the help system
> should contain both background/conceptual
> information
> *and* task-based information. Our question is:
> Should
> help system content duplicate documentation content?
> Or, do these items serve distinctly different
> purposes
> that merit different content?
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