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Subject:RE: Product Help vs. Application Help From:"James Doria" <jimdoria -at- techie -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 19 Nov 2002 13:14:58 -0500
Hello, all - new to the list...
> On 17 Nov 2002 at 22:56, rajancs2002 -at- yahoo -dot- com wrote:
> Can anyone tell me what is the difference between creating help
> for a software product and creating help for a software
> application (project)?
This seems like a distinction too vague to be useful. Is there any more information available?
In the absence of anything else, I'd think the key distinction is the term "project." That suggests a difference between creating docs for external versus internal use. Seems like this could mean 2 things:
1. The "product" is software designed for external release to a company's customers and the "project" is a program designed for internal use within the company. The relative abilities and assumed skill levels of the two different groups of users must be taken into account to create the docs, but the deliverables will be similar (context-sensitive help, online help, possibly a user's manual.)
2. The "product" is a program designed for end-users, and requires documentation that tells end-users how to operate the program, as above. The "project" is the development process, and requires documentation designed for the programmers who create and maintain the application. This might inlcude some description of what the different modules of the program are for, assistance on using custom programming tools, coding standards, etc.
But these are just my guesses. The description really is too vague to be sure.
= = = Original message = = =
Sent this yesterday, but it got kicked back to me...
<snip>
If I were asked this question, I would assume that by "help for
a
software product" they are talking about a "holistic"
view of the
software (ugh, I hate to use that word here but it just seems to
fit...),
and "help for a software application" is the step-by-step,
procedural
help on how to perform tasks.
Dana W.
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