Re: Layout, navigation, and content, and three-legged stools

[hedley_finger -at- myob -dot- com -dot- au]

Following up my previous message.

Someone mentioned that the standards for the entire Internet and TCP/IP are
documented in RFCs, which are certainly zones free of layout, navigation
tools (no index or table of contents), editorial and terminological
consistency, and style.  They are about as pure an example of
content-as-King as one would wish to find.

But, if the Internet and everything it depends on, including all technical
people who understand it, were suddenly vaporized by some alien
intelligence, it would take the rest of us 100 times longer to reconstruct
it than necessary precisely because of the lack of 'frivolous' layout, etc.

Or take UNIX man pages, generally considered to be both accurate and
complete.  These have been characterized as documentation that can tell you
the question provided you know the answer.  For example,

ANSWER: ls
QUESTION: What command lists the contents of a directory?

ANSWER: cron
QUESTION: What command can automatically execute a process at a given time
or interval of time?

Unfortunately for those of us who do NOT know the answers but can pose the
questions, the man pages are almost impenetrable.  (Now there's an Open
Source project: developing an index, a search engine, and synoptic table of
contents for man pages.)

So, Andrew Plato, if the nuclear plant was about to go nova, would you like
the technicians to have thoroughly complete documentation on what to do
typed single-spaced on yellowed pulp and with no TOC or index or
formatting?  Or would you allow that this documentation should be (not
necessarily in ANY order)

@    accurate,
@    complete,
@    legible,
@    readable (not the same as legible), that is, understandable,
@    navigable,
@    and functionally designed, that is, where form follows structure and
content,

and that NONE of these can be dispensed with for any substantial and
critical publication?

Of course you won't, because it's much more fun continuing to defend the
Maginot line even when the invading hordes have already overrun the country
from the southern seaboard.

Regards,
Hedley

--
Hedley Finger
Technical Communications/Technical communicator and FrameMaker mentor
MYOB Australia <http://www.myob.com.au/>
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151
Australia
<mailto:hedley_finger -at- myob -dot- com -dot- au>
Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

(C) MYOB Limited 2002



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