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Re: Use of Object Oriented Programming Terms in Documentation
Subject:Re: Use of Object Oriented Programming Terms in Documentation From:Laura Johnson <lauraj -at- CND -dot- HP -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 11 Oct 1994 16:54:58 GMT
From an end user's point of view, a printer is a printer, not a "printer
object". Printers, computers, and desk chairs are all objects, in OOP as
in life, so that's a safe-enough general term. Objects have attributes; if you
really need to say something like "click on any object in the map to see
a list of its attributes", well, that also works as an English sentence.
But don't get into anything more OOPish than that if you can avoid it.
(BTW, objects in real life *don't* have "fields", unless the objects in
question are farms. Note that different OOP languages have slightly
different jargon, too; Smalltalk doesn't use "field".)
I write documentation for application developers. Said developers really
have to either know some OOP concepts before they buy our platform, or
learn those concepts from my manuals. That's a whole other container of
fish objects.
--
Laura Johnson
lauraj -at- fc -dot- hp -dot- com
Hewlett Packard NSMD
Ft. Collins, CO
