RE: The demise of the printed manual?

[John Cornellier <tw -at- cornellier -dot- com>]

> I agree that that is one of the flaws with Microsoft software--lack of
> printed manuals.

But I don't think MS is saying "we don't think you should have paper 
manuals",  I think they're just making a business decision that they're not 
in the manual-producing biz, and it's more efficient to let 3rd parties do it.

If there aren't 3rd parties filling in the gap, maybe you shold think more 
carefully before you drop print.

I've seen a lot of complaining about the FrameMaker 6.0 manual, and I 
wonder whether there would actually have been *less* complaining had they 
not supplied a book at all, leaving it to Dummies, et al.

John Cornellier
tech writer


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems 
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com

Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East, 
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline 
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com. 

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.