TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
In this situation, I would make the caution part of the step, i.e.,
when you click on the link to the step, the caution should be at
the top of the page/frame/whatever that contains the step, prior
to the text of the step itself.
As for book recommendations, regulatory inspectors and
product liability lawsuit juries aren't going to care a whit; the
onus is on you to make whatever single source arrangement
you use comply with the requirement that the readers see
the cautions/warnings before they see the instruction.
Another thing to consider is the final output of the document. For those of
us going from FrameMaker to HTML or PDF, there's a risk when you put a
caution above a step. If a user clicks on a hyperlink to get to a step, the
hyperlink could take him/her directly to the step text, so the user could
potentially miss the caution entirely. You have to get the hyperlink to jump
above the step so the caution always shows (a problem if you're linking to
the step number itself).
The book Single Sourcing - Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament
recommends placing notes and cautions after a step for just this reason.
Think of it in terms of an outline. If you're looking at an outline, do you
expect to see information relating to an item before the item itself? Or
does it all follow the number?
ROBOHELP X5: Featuring Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author
support, PDF and XML support and much more!
TRY IT TODAY at http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrl
WEBWORKS FINALDRAFT: New! Document review system for Word and FrameMaker
authors. Automatic browser-based drafts with unlimited reviewers. Full
online discussions -- no Web server needed! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
