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On 05/15/2001 6:17 PM, ccallen -at- beckman -dot- com (ccallen -at- beckman -dot- com) wrote:
>That probably works best if all you're doing is telling software users how
>to use an application, but there are many, many writing projects where this
>approach is not just impracticle--it's downright impossible. When I was
>writing flight manuals for the USAF, they would have been quite reluctant
>to give me a $25 mil airplane to fool around with and try to figure out how
>to keep it in the sky.
I've never documented an airplane, but in a project where you can't use
the widget in question, can't you use the simulator, or the model, or the
emulation software, or whatever the people who do quality assurance are
using? And there *are* people doing quality assurance, right? As
components are built, or controls are designed, and systems are
assembled, I'd assume that there are people verifying that the parts work
as intended...
If you can't get the finished product to document, I would hope that you
could get the same devices/systems/widgets that the people testing it
use, and use that to supplement the (inevitably inaccurate)
specifications and "experts" you have available.
Or is that impossible too? Please clarify...
----->Mike
________________________________________________________________
stockman -at- jagunet -dot- com -- AOL and AOL Instant Messenger:MStockman
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