Re: Documentation Vs. Program Responsibility

["Arlen P. Walker" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

      A more general question would be, should the documentation reiterate
      things that are already somewhat user freindly in the program?

Perhaps it should call them out, so that the user knows to expect something like
that. Not everyone will look for the end-of-data indication in same place. If
you spend a little paper showing the user what to expect, you'll make it easier
to recognize it when it happens. At the same time, you should tell the user what
options are available at that point in the program.

I once worked with a program which could only open one file at a time. The
documentation didn't call that to my attention, and I spent some time (not much
I admit, but it was still annoying) trying to figure out why the "Open" choice
wasn't available to me. When I realized I had to close the current file before
the "Open" choice was active, I figured it out.

I'm sure the developers thought disabling the "Open" choice was a friendly way
to tell me I could work on one file at a time. Another approach in another
package was to quickly  close and save the current file, then open the file I
selected. It took less time to figure out what happened, but it was still
annoying.

I would have found a simple statement of the limitation and what would happen if
I tried to exceed this limitation preferable to either choice.


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 124

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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