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I have a product with two flavors that can be used
on 3 versions of operating systems. The majority of
the text is identical in these 6 documents. This is
a SW product for hardware interface.
Currently the documentation is provided based on the
flavor purchased, and each OS has a separate chapter.
The customer gets a 28 page document that has about
8 pages of relevant information.
>From the user perpective, I see it as an advantage to
have separate chapters for each. The user can rip out
the irrelevant chapters and just keep the pertinent
information for their OS.
It would be relatively easy to combine these documents
into one document that includes all the variations. I
have a concern that such documentation would be prone
to a user reading the wrong information and messing
up the installation.
Each chapter is about 8 pages, so we are not talking
about a large book. I just inherited this document
set, and each chapter was created differently, with
the same information in different locations, and
inconsistent layout, so I have to go through it
completely anyway to clean it up.
I am soliciting suggestions or examples for ways to
make a compromise and keep the consistent information
in one location and provide the variable information
in way to make it easy for the customer.
Tools at my disposal = FrameMaker+SGML
CB
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