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Subject:Re: An index in service manuals From:Wayne Douglass <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 29 May 1998 10:59:48 -0700
At 10:42 AM 5/29/98 -0700, Barry wrote:
>
>Where I work, the powers that be have decided amongst themselves that
>service manuals may not contain an index.
>
>What are your views?
>
When I was a manager of a department that wrote service manuals, our books
did not have an index because the SW we were using at the time (long ago)
didn't make indexing possible. We compensated with a very detailed table of
contents and a standard manual organization, regardless of the device we
were writing about. Our audience would know, for example, that Installation
was *always* Chapter 4.
With today's tools there really is no excuse to write a book without an
index - unless it is very short.
--Wayne
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Wayne Douglass phone: 408-542-2139
Verity, Inc. FAX: 408-542-2040
894 Ross Road mailto:wayned -at- verity -dot- com
Sunnyvale, CA 94089 http://www.verity.com
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