Re: How do I document vaporware?

[Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Please tell me this software with its phlogiston interface is strictly an in-house product. Please tell me they are not trying to sell this to real live customers.


--- On Tue, 1/27/09, Sarah Stegall <sstegall -at- bivio -dot- net> wrote:

From: Sarah Stegall <sstegall -at- bivio -dot- net>
Subject: How do I document vaporware?
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 6:46 PM

Having spent half a week taking all references to a certain feature OUT
of our software documentation, I am now informed that these references
are "placeholders" for future development. This means that when our
users (other software developers) browse through the command line
interface or the help menu, they are going to find undocumented commands
(that don't currently do anything anyway). 

 

There's no telling when these "features" are actually going to be
implemented (software design plan? We don't need no stinking plan...).
What would be the best way to mention these in user documentation? I am
afraid our users will be very confused when they happen across
undocumented commands. Has anyone else had to deal with this? Thanks for
any feedback.

 

 

Sarah Stegall

 

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ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
http://www.doctohelp.com

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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