Re: Why I Hate GUI-Centric Docs (Long)

[Writers Book Mall <steve -at- writersbookmall -dot- com>]

It's relatively easy to get a report of all the
objects in a GUI and then write to them, or as I
suspect most such writers do, just work from a copy of
the software, which adds in the risk that they might
miss some screens or options.

It's another, higher level of writing to learn or
figure out what the tasks are (let alone what they
ought to be) and explain how to do them. Task-based
documentation has been around a long time, but too few
manuals seem to reflect it.

True, in some cases, a feature-by-feature reference is
needed or helpful, but task documentation should
almost always come first. (I say "almost" just to be
safe, though I can't offhand think of when this might
be.)

--- Janice Gelb <Janice -dot- Gelb -at- Sun -dot- COM> wrote:

> As a user, I would have much preferred to open this
> Help file and find a list of tasks, including a task
> titled "To Create a Multiple-Page PDF File" that
> would have walked me through the process, rather
> than
> having to skim through dialog box descriptions
> located
> through the help until I found buttons or fields
> that
> matched the next thing I figured I had to do.


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