Re: Good/bad docs

[Kevin Christy <kkchristy -at- YAHOO -dot- COM>]

I'm intruiged by the possibilities presented for documentation by the
upcoming "electronic books" that are creeping up on the horizon.

It seems to me that the problems inherent to paper documentation
(production & shipping costs, the fact that they are no longer current
once patches and/or upgrades are distributed, that any errors are
"uneraseable", that performing a search in a book is time-consuming
and limited by the quality of the index, and any other host of
problems that I may be omitting) and to web-based documentation (user
has to connect to the net, the connection may be slow or broken, the
online help screens would overlay their work, and creative expression
of documentation and/or tutorials is limited by bandwidth and plug-ins
to the browsers that enable that expressiveness) may be resolved
substantially by these new products.

Users potentially could pop the CD with the documentation on it into
the eBook and navigate the docs without having to overlay their work
with help screens.  Also, if the eBook were linked with the software
program in use, context-sensitive tips and help could instantaneously
be brought up as the user works, again without obscuring the work in
progress.

eBooks would also allow the user to read the documentation or go
through tutorials away from his or her computer, which I often find
myself doing (it helps if your hobby is the same as your job  :)  ).
Presumably, patches to the documentation could be downloaded from the
web and stored in the eBook's memory or mass storage.

Nothing truly innovative here, I know, but it does seem a logical
evolution of documentation in the digital age.

-Kevin
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