Re: Documenting software

Subject: Re: Documenting software
From: Ginna Watts <sweep!gwatts -at- QUESTERCORP -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 17:50:30 +0000

Janice Gelb wrote:
>
> What you're documenting, I think, should be what the user needs to know
> to use the software to get something done. Most of the time, that just
> means the GUI, not the underlying software. As I told one of my writers
> once when an engineer was bugging him to include more of the underlying
> technology, the name of the book is "Using XProduct" not "Everything
> You Always Wanted to Know About XProduct But Were Afraid to Ask."
>
At my last job, one of our programmers would solemnly explain to me
that such and such dialog box was an "MDI Child". I'd take the note,
mutter "yeah whatever", and then tell the user that from box such and
such they could change the master units etc.

Sometimes he'd wonder where all his lovely technical detail went, but
I'd just smile and say it was edited out.

Ginna

Ginna Watts - Technical Writer
Quester Tangent Corporation
gwatts -at- questercorp -dot- com
Sidney, BC




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