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--- Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> Gee, I've been saying that for over a decade and
> nobody pays to attend any of
> my seminars.
Hmm - is this a matter of content or style? :-)
Hackos is a very effective presenter with solid
academic credentials and she is obviously a good
marketer as well. If I had been required to pay for
the course on my own, I wouldn't have done so, but the
company I am working for paid for it. Most of what she
said was obvious once she had said it, but she had a
very good way of summarizing and elucidating important
points.
> Hackos (and me of course) are correct. Most writers
> document surface-level
> instructions and do not take the time or effort to
> really think about HOW the
> product/technology works and might be used. As such,
> most tech docs are endless
> streams of pointless and worthless instructions.
This is a huge problem. I agree.
> This is usually caused by an over-emphasis on style
> and structure. Writers
> spend all their energy and time building monuments
> of style and structure and
> as such pay minimal attention to the content. The
> result - bad docs.
The company I am working for is trying to introduce as
much consistency in style and structure as possible
and also trying to reduce doc size as much as possible
in order to reduce huge localization costs. Given how
expensive localization in multiple languages is, you
might find that the cost/benefit analysis favors huge
amounts of time spent on structure and consistency. If
the docs are for an English-only app and will always
be so, then structure likely deserves less attention.
Lois Patterson
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