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Subject:Re: Why We Need Good Software Manuals From:"Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- EXPERSOFT -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 30 Jan 1996 17:19:44 -0800
At 2:59 AM 1/30/96, Jane Bergen answers Bill Newkirk:
>> one problem we're seeing with new stuff, is "pointless help". got a
>> dialog box with a field that says "file name" and an OK function
>> button and you click the help key and get a nice dialog that says
>> things like "this is the file name field". no duh.
[snip]
>This is my pet peeve and yet my engineers absolutely INSIST that I do
>this! I hate it! They want every field in every window and dialog box
>to have a separate topic. I've thrown fits but to no avail. How much
>can you say about a field titled "Last Name" or "City"?
[snip]
Well, yes, I agree that "this is the filename field" is worse than
useless, but pity the poor user who *does* look for help there. For
consistency's sake, you need the help topic -- but there's a wealth of
(only semi-useless) information you can provide...
Filename - use the standard 8.3 MS-DOS naming convention. This software
does not support long filenames.
City - enter up to 256 alphanumeric characters. This field sorts
according to strict ASCII colating sequence, so capitalize consistently
across records.
There's always *something*. ;-)
-Sue Gallagher
sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com
