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Re: Longhorn - Tech writing changes

Subject: Re: Longhorn - Tech writing changes
From: "Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 09:33:50 -0400


chevotilburg -at- postmaster -dot- co -dot- uk wrote:

But many authors do fine. This quote sums up UI/UA design for me. "The
goal of the UI designer is to put the Help author out of a job". This from
a Microsoft Help author and team leader who I highly respect. You don't
need to document everything."

Maybe that'll work for Microsoft. Every time they release a major version of Windows they create a more and more minimal documentation paradigm. They can afford to do that because they are in a league of their own; they have a whole industry of third-party trainers and documentors supporting Microsoft products. And that's probably as it should be.

But as long as corporate PHBs and customers continue to write contracts that demand "complete documentation," us general corporate/commercial writers will just keep on truckin'.

Actually I don't really care if Microsoft documents every field in every dialog box in Windows, as long as the technical docs are good. AFAIK there are still lots of critical functions in the NT API that remain undocumented. And they never did publish a decent doc on the Word object model.

Mike O.

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