Re: How many steps?

[John Gough <john -at- ATRIUM -dot- COM>]

[ Karen Steele writes: ]
> I'm writing a long, complex set of instructions & keep breaking them into
>  smaller units.
> What rules do you follow?

We don't have a set of rules.  I let a general principal of
cognition guide me:  people can process/remember about
7 items at a time.  Actually, I shorten it to 5, because
the rule is based on 7 plus or minus 2, and I don't want
to drop my readers off the low end of the bell curve. :-)

To break up necessarily long lists, I try to group steps.
Usually a small number of steps is related to some nameable
process.  At the beginning of each level of nesting,
I summarize the the number of pieces *in the new level*,
to help them keep track of how far along they are. This is
an example from an installation guide for a complex installation
process.  Details are elided in <>'s:

  <Summary of Processes>
  Extracting the Software from Tape
         <4 steps>
  Installing Files on Each Machine
         <3 steps>
  Configuring the Software
     <Summary of Processes>
     Configuring the Delivery Service
         <Summary of Processes>
         DM
         <5 steps>
         DRB
            <Summary of Processes>
            configuring the server
            <2 steps>
            adding queues
            <6 steps>
            adding logical destinations
            <4 steps>
         DSUP
     Configuring the Notification Service
     ...

Also, if a set of steps is repeatable, I try to cite it that way.
For example: "Follow these steps for *each* machine in your network:"
Then I show the steps for just one machine, perhaps listing the
effects for others in a sample network.

Point of whimsy: some software structures are built this way, encoding
information about what's in the structure in a header of the
structure, with allowances for substructuring recursively.  Anyone
know if genomes follow this pattern?  Might be too early to tell.

Hope this helps.
John
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
John Gough                                        john -at- atrium -dot- com
Principal Technical Writer                   voice (512) 328-6977
Atrium Technologies                            fax (512) 328-2789
Austin, TX