Why marketing should make the user manuals

[Gene Kim-Eng]

It's actually worse than that.  The "ease" with which writers can
now *sort of* do the work of illustrators, page layout designers
and typesetters has resulted in writers being REQUIRED to do
it, and the result has been that many people in these fields have
seen their livelihoods dry up while the quality of documentation
has fallen due to writers having to divert time away from the
important tasks of researching the products they document to
do the production work formerly done with better results by
others.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Susan Hogarth" <hogarth at gmail.com>

> At an auction, I came across a beautiful old 16mm projector. Didn't
> buy it, because our house is too cluttered already, but the manual
> alone was almost worth the price it went for (around $20, I think). It
> was -lovely- - slick B/W pages with -wonderful- drawings and diagrams
> and beautifully written. The layout was beautiful - more polished than
> many books of the period (1950s, I think). I'm not a luddite, but I
> wonder sometimes if word processors and layout software have just
> enabled people to do things sloppily with more ease...