RE: Butt-or-ego insulation query

["Peter Swisher" <PeteS -at- bmgi -dot- com>]

(slightly off your topic and rantish)

You cannot imagine every scenario. For example, who could imagine this
scenario?

I am a relatively intelligent technical writer with over 7 years
experience as such. I'm used to "complex" tools such as QuarkXPress, C/S
publishing systems, Photoshop, Illustrator, Word and so forth.
Admittedly, I'd rather be on the beach reading a good book (composed of
paper, not the electronic kind) or hiking somewhere in the Applachian
mountains.  Instead, I'm in the Midwest, working at a great new job, and
having to write an HTML help file for the first time.  

To make my job easy, the company was nice enough to buy the latest and
greatest tool, RoboHelp for HTML Help X3. After thoroughly studying the
excellent tutorial, I feel confident I can start my job. Getting down to
the nitty gritty, I want to set up styles for the help system. No
problem, I say. Select format -> styles and off I go. 

An HOUR later, I've finally figured out how to create a style for
bulleted lists. I navigate around under "Format -> Paragraph" and
"Format -> Font", "Advance" buttons, this button, that button, and
everywhere else. No mention of bullets or numbering is to be found.
Maybe today was my unlucky day, but I figure I'd try the help file. It
links up to a Web page and I navigate to a section that intices me:
"Formatting Bulleted Lists". Then, a subsection entices me: "To Format a
bulleted list for a style sheet". Great! Wow! This should be easy. 

Well, step 3 references a GUI item that doesn't exist on the "Styles"
dialog. I get past that and the next step says something about Cascading
Style Sheets. What do I care? I want to create a bulleted list. Then,
there are very thorough instructions about how to do obvious things
like: "click New to create a New style", "type a name in the Name
field", and so forth. I am following along earnestly. I get to step 9
and there is still no mention of "bullets", but it does say to "TO
FURTHER CUSTOMIZE YOUR STYLE, CLICK FORMAT AND SELECT THE ATTRIBUTES YOU
WANT TO CHANGE." Two steps later, OK and Close and you're done. 

So, I still don't know how to create a bulleted list style, but I click
around to the same places I clicked around before and "bullets and
numbering" has somehow magically appeared in the Format drop-down. My
Lord!

This is not a slam of RoboHelp and maybe I'm just not that smart.
However, should this simple task have been that difficult? Again, this
is not intended to slam RoboHelp. I just find that software evolves to
become overly complex, and wherever it can, it misses the obvious. I see
this in Adobe, Quark, definitely Microsoft, and most any app, well,
except for SnagIt! At the end of the day, I'd just rather be reading a
good book, on the beach, or in the Appalachian Mountains. 

Sorry for the rant, but I did warn you. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A new book on Single Sourcing has been released by William Andrew
Publishing: _Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation_
is now available at: http://www.williamandrew.com/titles/1491.html.

Help Authoring Seminar 2003, coming soon to a city near you! Attend this
educational and affordable one-day seminar covering existing and emerging
trends in Help authoring technology. See http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l2.

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