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----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Starr" <mikestarr-techwr-l -at- writestarr -dot- com>
> But did you then document those "custom" functions?
Yes, we documented the customs, but not until a
customer actually ordered them. Then an engineer
from Product Support worked out the operator steps
(and in some cases, wrote software macros and code
patches) and we documented them.
> What you're talking about is a business decision not to support specific
> functionality even though it's actually built into the product. What I'm
> talking about are functions that are supported but not documented...
> features that are fully functional and exposed to the users. To me, it's a
> shabby business practice to incorporate features into a product with the
> intention that some segment of the user community will use them and then not
> provide documentation of those features.
None of our undocumented, unsupported features were
concealed from the users. We didn't mention them
anywhere, not in advertising brochures or in any
user docs, but the dialogs were fully accessible through
the UI. After all, we wanted the customers who might
have a use for the unadvertised and unsupported functions
to see them and want them.
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