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Subject:Re: Creating inch and metric tutorials (longish) From:edunn -at- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 6 Apr 2001 11:42:33 -0400
My gut feeling would be to use FrameMaker and conditional text. Build tutorials
with instructions and illustrations for both metric and imperial and
conditionalise all parts that are exclusive to one or the other.
But when it comes to learning the software, why does it matter what the units
are? Aren't all the tools and functions identical except for the size of the
units involved? The only horrendous problems I can see is if you use fractions
in your imperial measurements and not decimal. Explain how to change from metric
to imperial then give all the tutorials in on system. Aren't the concepts,
approaches, command names, etc. all the same?
If you want to extend the courtesy of having distinct tutorials, to ease the
writing and design, design your tutorials around a one to one relationship (1 in
= 1 cm). Either you'll be making overly large objects in imperial or overly
small in metric but that hardly matters. Make separate screen shots in each
system to have the right look and feel for the software.
When dealing with imperial measurements, one aspect that is often overlooked is
the difference between US imperial and British imperial. Plus of course all the
other archaic variations that use the same units to descrribe different
measures.
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