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> (None of this is intended as a judgment on the quality of the
> Acrobat doc.)
>
> __________________________________________________
>
I agree. I am absolutely not intending this as a judgment on the quality of
the Acrobat doc. The quality is just fine for me. I just used Adobe as one
example of the numerous types of third party software that our application
uses.
Even if I did rewrite Adobe's instructions as you suggest, then we get into
maintenace and usability issues. To me, there is no
return on our investment when we document 3rd party products. It is usually
very time-consuming to prepare in the first place, and the 3rd party product
upgrades and new releases are never in synch with our own product releases,
which makes the maintenance even more expensive. The out-of-synch issue also
creates the potential for user dissatisfaction because our documentation on
the 3rd party product may be outdated at any given time -- giving our users
the impression that our documentation is "wrong" -- reflecting on our
overall product and company image.
And this just recently happened . .. Adobe published a patch for the forms
funtionality of AA and since Adobe's new releases/patches are never in synch
with our own product releases, the instructions I had written for of my UG
was out of synch before the doc even went out the door.
I feel like I am really caught between a rock and hard place w/ this one.
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