TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
One suggestion is to use courier or another fixed-pitch font whenever you're
showing this type of code. The number of spaces is pretty obvious when
these fonts are used. In most cases where I've worked, an underscore is
also part of the code, so using it as a symbol for a blank space just makes
for confusing code.
You also might want to look into instruction books for this code and see how
the single blank space/double blank space etc. is dealt with when people are
learning the stuff.
If they really want some invented squiggle - thingy symbols that indicates
"single blank space" or "double blank space" my suggestion is to ask the
client for a list of all symbols that is used in the programming language
code, then create some.... but why on earth do they want a symbol for a
blank space?
typical Friday PM confused mode
Paul Strasser
Windsor Technologies
Lafayette, CO
----- Original Message -----
> I am developing docs that include examples of code. These code snippets
> include very important spaces among other characters. The number of
> successive spaces is important too. My client has asked that I find a
means
> to indicate that a specific number spaces exist in the code via some sort
> of symbol, such as an underscore. So an example of code would look like
> this in the doc:
>
> codecode_code__code___
>
> Obviously, users would need to know that the underscore is not used in the
> code, but simply represents a space. Does anyone have any suggestions of
> how to handle this effectively in docs?
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> John J. Gardiner
> Design and Documentation
> www.johngardiner.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Announcing new options for IPCC 01, October 24-27 in Santa Fe,
New Mexico: attend the entire event or select a single day.
For details and online registration, visit http://ieeepcs.org/2001
Your monthly sponsorship message here reaches more than
5000 technical writers, providing 2,500,000+ monthly impressions.
Contact Eric (ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com) for details and availability.
---
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.