Help on help: a medical application?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Yaacov Garber is documenting <<a medical software application (MSA) and
trying to find a  valid Help solution to what appears to be an impossible
situation. The parameters that I have been presented with are as follows. 1.
The MSA UI must be displayed and active at all times.>>

Provided that the UI occupies a fixed amount of space, and leaves room on
the screen for a second window, then one design goal should be to fit the
help window within the space not occupied by the MSA so the two can work
together. However:

<<2. Messages (i.e. alerts and warnings) and current data generated by  the
MSA must not be obscured by a Help window.>>

You mentioned that this is running under Windows NT, which I haven't used.
Assuming that NT behaves pretty much the  same way as Win95/98, this goal
cannot be achieved with 100% certainty: the user can always resize (e.g.,
minimize) or reposition an active window, which means they can obscure the
MSA to their heart's content. To achieve what is required, you'll have to
extend the main MSA window by adding a "frame" of some sort in which the
help information appears. (This is one form of "embedded" help.)

<<3. The MSA does not have DLLs, so context sensitive Help is not an
option.>>

On the contrary. All this means is that the developers have to build the
equivalent functionality directly into the application without relying on
Microsoft. As a programming challenge, that ranks right up there with
displaying "Hello world!" on the screen. <g> In this case, all that's
required is that the Help button for each screen is linked to a specific
chunk of text stored in a file full of help information; a database approach
would seem to be reasonable, and if they're programming in something like
Delphi, that functionality is already built in.

<<4. Building Help objects in the MSA development cycle is not a feasible
option.>>

I'm not sure what you mean, so I can't suggest anything.

<<The powers that be see this Help project more as an online user guide and
not a situation specific Help system. Additionally, they don't see it as
being particularly important so money and time allocated to it would be
minimal.>>

If they don't see it as important, you've got a tough job ahead of you. Ask
them what the consequences would be if you don't provide any help
whatsoever: that will very quickly make them understand that yes, it really
is important. It's a medical application, so you might point out to them
that they're legally going to be liable if they provide inadequate help
files and some patient dies (or worse) as a result of a medical technician
or a doctor being unable to use the software properly. Of course, they might
discover that documentation is really unimportant after all, in which case
you just saved yourself a pile of work, and in the time freed up, you can
start looking for a company that has a clue.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer

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