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A thousand apologies. Please, please, please, let's not have
a flame war over this. My intent was not to go to battle
stations or give you all 'tude. It just seemed that some
people were missing the point, because after all, how many
life threatening circumstances can you get into when you're
using a new spreadsheet or graphics program. I was just
trying to emphasize that there are situations when you DON'T
want the user to do anything but what your instruction says.
> I wish you software documenters would realize that there is
> more technology to write about than what's in that little box
> on your desk.
I bet a flamewar starts over this one! In my years of generating
docs for both software and hardware products, I've never encountered
this attitude. Let me suggest that, when posting to this group,
most of us use examples relevant to our own experience. So someone
who generally pretty much writes about software will probably use
software-ish examples (hence the password thingie); someone who
pretty much writes about hardware will probably use hardware-ish
examples (the component on the crane).
I doubt if these types of examples are meant to convey that the
other world doesn't exist ...
Now, having resisted the urge to flame, I'll return to my books
(both hardware and software, by the by ...).
Posted with a wry grin ;-) ...
anne halsey
sr tech writer, storagetek
anne_halsey -at- stortek -dot- com
