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Text Is Poor For Documenting Procedure Was Documenting the undocumentable (humor, sort of)
Subject:Text Is Poor For Documenting Procedure Was Documenting the undocumentable (humor, sort of) From:Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 7 Sep 2004 10:15:56 -0700 (PDT)
What caught my attention is the subject of the
original thread. As TW's we are often asked to
document what is not documentable. Most technical
writers document procedure. And as Ed Yourdon used to
say: "Procedure is like dance; it defies written
description.". Such is especially true for complex
software applications.
What Yourdon was referring to is the asynchronous
nature of procedure. That is potentially many things
happening at the same time, and a lot of
flow-of-control branching occurring.
Text is a poor mechanism for documenting procedure
because it is one dimensional (i.e., linear -
primarily meant for one-thing-happening-after-another
situations) whereas procedure is often
multi-dimentional (i.e., asynchronous).
Tony Markos
--- Geoff Hart <geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Thought I'd pass this one along, not because the
> documentation is
> bad--it's actually quite clear--but as one more data
> point on why
> programmers and engineers should never be allowed to
> design user
> interfaces:
>
>
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