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Please forward to techwr-l for additional commentary; I can't post
directly. Thanks.
--Geoff
*********
Rowena Hart posed the dilemma of developers informing her that her
documentation is too verbose and elementary for its (ostensibly)
"sophisticated users".
Ah, the perpetual dilemma. The perpetual response is equally short:
know thy audience before tampering with the docs. If the developers
can't provide hard numbers on the breakdown of sophisticated vs.
non-sophisticated users, they're blowing smoke and watching to see
whether you'll cough. If your documentation has been received
favorably by the users so far, and technical support cost levels are
tolerable or even good, why change what's working? Now if you want to
improve on what you're already doing, that's another whole issue, but
you'll have to contact some real users of the product to find out
what needs improvement and whether the suggested changes really
represent an improvement. Anything else is like buying lottery
tickets: a big payoff if you're lucky, but more likely just an
excellent way to waste money.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Hart's corollary to Murphy's law: "Occasionally, things really do work
right."
