Re: Respect or no/Manuals by the inch

[David Somers <David -dot- SOMERS -at- ST -dot- COM>]

     So far, I've trimmed 25% without comprimising the usability of the
     documentation too much. A fair bit of that came from just cutting out
     a whole pile of stuff that isn't yet officially suported in the
     application... the fact these options are visible and/or not grayed
     out is a(nother) UI issue ;-)

     Splitting into quick reference and user's guide isn't an option since
     the documentation set has already been split.

     Respect-wise, the documentation I'm working on was 3 to 18 months out
     of date before they took me on (as a consultant) to update it... and a
     lot of that was written by the (french-speaking) system analysts, so
     you can just imagine what it was like. I think that is a good
     indicator of how much 'value' is placed on the documentation.

     Later,

     David Somers
     david -dot- somers -at- st -dot- com
     (Usual disclaimer - speaking for myself and not ST)


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Respect or no/Manuals by the inch

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David Somers writes:

>     re: manuals by the inch:
>     I had a meeting yesterday with my project leader to got through some
>     documentation that I'd put together. His main comment 'Its too big;
>     reduce the page count in half.'

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While that is somewhat a ridiculous comment (ok, I'm being generous), responding
glibbly, as Robert suggested, would only compound the problem.  It sounds like
your project leader already has a lack of respect for you and the job you
perform.  Turn the comment around on your project leader.  "OK, what do you
think is superfluous and we can talk about removing it or reducing its
presence."  This gives you the opportunity to explain what you did and why the
book is "too big."

How about suggesting two books, a quick refernce and a user's guide?

In our books, we removed a lot of unnecessary screen snapshots and reduced
our page count by about 30%.  Maybe you have too many graphics?

Just a couple of thoughts.

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