Re: How many pages...etc./R. Mateosian

[chuckm -at- MDHOST -dot- CSE -dot- TEK -dot- COM]

Richard Mateosian > >:
Jack Shaw:  >

> > Twenty-five years ago, at the dawn of the word processing age, nobody would
> > have attempted half of the things that routinely appear on the pages of
> > technical manuals today.

> Thirty years ago, half of the things we did in tech. manuals are
> no longer being done. Then, we had a stable of graphic artists and
> designers to help us illustrate concepts and do page layout. Now,
> unless the graphics are screen copies or clip-art silliness, very
> little useful conceptual illustration gets put into tech. publications
> at an OEM level.

Where I work, Tektronix Inc., we still have a "stable" of graphic artists/
illustrators. If anything, we try to put more graphics into our manuals
rather than less. We don't have designers working on page layout since
we have standardized our layout. In some areas, we have fewer illustrations,
such as in service manuals. But for the most part, we put in more
illustrations now than we ever have.

One possible reason for less conceptual material in manuals is the
emergence of minimalist documentation. We have learned that customers
look at manuals when they have a problem to solve, not to learn about the
product (yes, that is a generalization, there will always be exceptions).
Thus, we have task oriented manuals which help the customer
solved a specific problem. Our manuals contain less conceptual
information than they used to because we are under pressure to shrink
them with respect to size and development costs. Of course, some will
lament the loss of conceptual material, but, research suggests that the
majority of users will not notice the lack of conceptual material.


> To wit: when was the last time you read anything on TECHWR-L from
> a tech. illustrator/graphic designer? Is there such a person in the
> business any more?

Who is doing all that illustration in the manuals? :-) Of course, there
are illustrators still in the business. As to why they don't post to this
list, well, I guess you'd have to ask them. :-)


> In the area of free-hand graphic support and conceptual illustration,
> computimation hasn't done that much for technical communication, IMHO...
> the quality of PC paint/Corel Draw have a way to go to equal the good
> old days of even the simplest handdrawn graphic illustration and design.

Tools do not make the artist, I'm sure you would agree. But, I think some
of our illustrations are better than they would be if drawn by hand.
Something can be rendered once and then duplicated many times, easily. For
some illustrations, this is a useful capability. And the ability to create
a library of graphic elements that can be reused saves time when developing
new material. Libraries of objects that can be reused also allow the
illustrator to concentrate on the new stuff rather than spending valuable
time simply copying old stuff. (Of course, this means fewer illustrators,
but that is a different discussion.)  We can take our engineers drawings
and convert them to a format we can use and then incorporate them
into the service documentation. That wasn't possible in the old days. Overall,
I think (from a writer's perspective) computer-based illustration has
improved the illustrations we provide. Of course, with any transition to a
new technology, there are wins and losses.

Chuck Melikian