TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
A person I'm working with is looking into supplying only on-line
documentation for his relatively simple software product. I've
seen comments on the list for a while now saying that customers
usually do want some form of a paper manual. This is the solution
that we're considering, and I thought I'd see if it evoked any
comments from people who may have tried it before:
I'm designing a hypertext document, based on modules. Each
module is one help screen, but they also have a specific order.
The customer can click on a button in one of the initial help
screens to print out a manual, built from the help screens.
This will lead to fairly heavy redundancy since each module must
stand alone in its context, but I don't view this as a bad
thing.
Has anyone tried an approach like this before? How did it work?
The programmer will be programming the help screens using .RTF
files that I help produce.
Scott McD.
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Stand hard-disk lame hers up lie. | Scott McDaniel
| Garcia Consulting, Inc.
I'm a citizen of Legoland, | (703) 412-3662
Travelling incommunicado! - Fish | mcdaniel -at- pioneer -dot- uspto -dot- gov