Diplomatic phrasing for nonfeatures

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Kristen Lorenz has <<to state that an option is
 unavailable, but will be with future enhancements. Any
 suggestions on a good way to phrase this?>>

 Come right out and call a spade a spade. The basic approach
 is to say something like "we know that you'd logically
 expect to be able to do this, but you can't and we're
 sorry; here's what you can do instead". Here's an example
 for PageMaker:

 "PageMaker X.0 does not support automatic footnotes.
 Instead, you must create footnotes manually for each page
 by.... (see page XX for details)." Note that I _didn't_ say
 "The _current version_ of Pagemaker does not..." because
 this would imply that the next version may. The good folks
 at Aldus (now Adobe), 10 years after the most basic of word
 processors implemented an automatic footnote function,
 still haven't gotten the message. This kind of honesty is
 important: it's unwise to imply that the feature may appear
 in some future version if you're not confident that it
 _will_ appear.

 I also abhor the practice of ignoring such an obvious
 feature as footnotes and then compounding matters by
 omitting it from the index (at least as of version 5) so
 frustrated users like me spend hours trying to figure out
 where you've hidden the information. This might also be an
 excellent occasion to use "This page intentionally left
 blank." <stitch> and <Fe>

 --Geoff Hart     @8^)     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.


Posts: mailto:techwr-l -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu
Commands: mailto:listserv -at- listserv -dot- okstate -dot- edu (e.g. SIGNOFF TECHWR-L)
Archives: http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html,
	http://www.documentation.com/, or http://www.dejanews.com/
Subjects: JOB:, QUESTION:, SUMMARY:, ANNOUNCE:, or none of these.