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We have a very large Reference Guide that describes all the commands and
functions in our software.
There's one area of the functionality that our customers don't use any
more (because they can do the same tasks, more easily and efficiently,
with another product from our company). The documentation for the
obsolete functionality takes about 100 pages of the Ref Guide, and lots
of HTML pages in the online help.
I've wanted to get rid of those pages for a long time, but only if the
functionality was stripped out of the software. After much pleading, I
finally got upper management to agree in principle - but it turns out to
be more trouble than it's worth, from a programming point of view.
So now they've asked me to just delete the pages in the documentation,
even though the functionality still exists, and still works. But this
means that certain dialogs and menu picks would still appear in the
software, with no explanation in the docs.
I feel very uncomfortable about undocumented features. I plan to get
some feedback from our users, but in the meantime....Has anyone out
there had a similar experience? What would you do?
Gilda Spitz
Manager, Documentation
Longview Solutions Inc.
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IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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