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Subject:RE: Training (was: What would you do? Part 2.) From:Chris Borokowski <athloi -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 23 Mar 2007 06:55:25 -0700 (PDT)
Well, there's two dimensions here. In a common sense
world, I agree entirely with your original post, and
lament the lack of capable documentation in what I
suspect might be the same tool. In a business sense, I
can see why it is this way. They develop the add-on
help first because that's where their profit is.
Is that sane? You and I both know the answer. Much of
software development, like many things in this world,
is handled badly from lack of organization,
personality problems in companies, unrealistic goals
and expectations, and probably other issues as well.
I've read enough of your posts to know you crusade
against this as I do, and I wish I had more comforting
words regarding this situation.
One reason that almost every piece of software has a
corresponding unofficial mailing list is that internal
help has declined gigantically as this market change
has slammed into place. We're halfway between software
as product and an intellectual property aware state of
law in which software, like books or music, are
licensed in abstract form. Growing pains and all that.
Is there a specific question on a help tool (maybe a
new topic to keep it "anonymous") that can be
answered? I'm sweating it out here with a variety of
them, and my commentary on their documentation was
nowhere near as polite, controlled and logical as
yours.
--- Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
wrote:
> Given that the tool is well into its not-so-early
> release numbers and that
> it was created by people who worked on a predecessor
> tool that has a
> dozen-year history, and given that it's a HELP
> AUTHORING TOOL fergawdsake
> you'd kind of expect the Help portion of it to be
> robust, comprehensive and
> several other nice adjectives that should obviate
> the need for basic
> training, yes?
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