Deja voodoo

[Kevin McLauchlan <KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com>]

Your many and various opinions are sought.

We have a hardware/firmware/software product, 
and we have a software utility that is used 
to initialize and maintain the product. In my 
manual, I had explained initialization steps 
and requirements by reference to the utility 
program.  That was the command-line/console 
version.  Then, they wrote a (barely) GUI version.

Since I have to document both, I wrote the 
procedure "from scratch" for the GUI version -- 
you know... to have a fresh look at it, and 
maybe pick up things I'd missed or glossed over 
the first time.

I liked both versions, though there was a fair 
bit of difference between them.  I used elements 
from each one to upgrade the other, but still liked 
both.  I decided to leave them both in the manual.
I reason that not everybody picks up on the same 
things in the same way, and giving people two 
different descriptive approaches to some of the 
important-decision stuff might give the curious 
and dedicated a better shot at making the right 
decisions.

I say "curious and dedicated" because I urge the 
reader to R T [entire] F M before jumping into the 
procedure, so that they can make important, 
far-reaching config decisions before the fat's in 
the fire, so to speak.  But I know that most will 
just jump in and assume they'll get it right 
without too much of that pesky reading... Very few 
would read the other version just to see what's there.

One of my reviewers prefers that I "standardize" 
on one version.  She doesn't have a real preference 
between 'em, but wants me to pick one and kill the 
other.   I can prevail if I choose, but 
should I?  The information in both sections is 
essentially the same, but the presentation, 
approach, word-choice, some selected emphasis, is 
often different.  It's not as good, I suppose, 
as having two people explain a thing, but it's 
one guy after several months of "cooling off", so 
I think it's the next best thing to two points of 
view... say, one-and-a-half viewpoints... :-)

Does anybody else see value in keeping such a 
difference?  I can't really just amalgamate, 
because it would then seem annoyingly 
repetitive.  Are there strong arguments AGAINST?

Regards,

/k