Re: Word 6.0 and help text problems

[Rowena Hart <rhart -at- INTRINSYC -dot- COM>]

Iain,

>Maybe you caught me on a bad day,

Yes, but we all have bad days.  No problem.  My appologies if I appeared to
be a desperate, ill-educated and procrastinating newbie tech writer.  Such
is not the case.

Word 6.0 is an adequate, and as one respondent mentioned, robust tool for
creating help.  However, I have been monitoring WinHelp and RoboHelp
listserves and talking to other techwriters about on-line help creation
tools, and they tend to scoff at Word 6.0 as a tool.  Perhaps I absorbed
some of their disdain.

I didn't post specific questions, simply because I didn't want to waste the
time of the whole list.  That is the general idea, from my 5+ years of
on-line and tech writing experience, if you are asking for assistance on a
listserve.  Let me know if I'm wrong about that one.

You are quite correct to suggest that people with no knowledge of a product
or process seek training "off-list".  I felt that my questions were on the
borderline between no experience and lots of experience.  The answers I
received were just what I needed to get back on track with my project, which
is due in a reasonable amount of time, not tomorrow.

One thing to remember, Iain, is that personality sometimes doesn't come
across well in email, and a sender's message is easily misinterpreted.  I
was trying for a jocular, joking tone and it obviously didn't work this
time.  However, I'd like to suggest that before you hit "send" on another
highly critical message -- that will be delivered to the entire list -- you
should think about that.  Just say no to flame-mail.

Cheers, and thanks to clperry, Pam, Bill and Dick for their help.

- Rowena  ;>)

---------------------
Rowena Hart
Technical Writer
Intrinsyc Software, Inc.
http://www.intrinsyc.com