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There are some interesting insights in this email. Not to criticize, but I am
getting an a strange feeling that a folklore is being constructed with these
figures and the broad based assumptions being made. I agree that transitioning
to online from page-based documentation may take a while. However, most of that
time is in evaluation of the tools which you want to use. What study and
evaluation does this stuff come from?
Currently there are online documentation viewers on the market which are fairly
uncomplicated for the user and do present page-based documentation online well.
The power of the search engine in at least one of the viewers I have evaluateed
totally supplants the necessity for an indexing effort. With some practice and
forethought and a top notch publications production group, you could write your
documentation within a product cycle, produce both hard copy and CD-ROM
versions (in theory, the marketplace may have to be weaned from the (sic)
comfort and feel of hard copy documentation it is so used to) and still meet
the shipping date to the customer.
Not to mention, there are training tutorials being produced for use online
today in high tech markets which are constructed and ready for customer use on
a quarterly basis.
If you are going to construct a documenation set from the zip to all the bells
and whistles using Multimedia production software and techniques, your major
effort is going to be your learning curve and the training of the illustrators,
artists and production persons who are going to implement most of your
production. Learning to write for online documentation for an experienced
writer shouldn't take 3 years. The technical communication market is so
dynamic that an experienced writer, editor, illustration, artist, or production
specialist does not have the time to take 3 years to learn something new. That
is professional suicide.
There seems to be a disconnect with the reality of the marketplace and the
theorizing of the academics.
PLB
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One of the writers in our group recently attended one of William Horton's
seminars. Here is some info she gathered there:
Online doc is a team effort. The team spends more time making decisions
and convincing others than with hardcopy projects.
Your first online doc project will take 3 times as long as if you did the
same project in hardcopy. By your fifth project, it should take about the
same amount of time. It will never take less time.
It takes 2 1/2 to 3 years to change your writing style for online.
Authoring a single source file for both online & paper takes about 1 1/4
times as long as authoring for just one.
If your need to produce both online and paper: Design for online and then
derive the paper doc.
If you need to phase in online doc:
First put detailed reference info online
then put user task-oriented procedures online
then put tutorial online.
Takes 5-7 years to create a full online doc set.
