Re: Styles for User Guides

[Sharon Burton-Hardin <sharonburton -at- EMAIL -dot- MSN -dot- COM>]

What does the client own? Do they own the template they asked you to create
for them and they had you copy the "Microsoft look" ? At the end of the
project, does the client own the template? I say yes. It is what they paid
for, especially since you created it at their request and they paid you for
the time. What the client pays for is what they own. There is nothing to
stop you creating the identical look for another client but I think it is
unethical to take client a's template and drop it into client b's project if
client a requested you create for them and paid you for the time.

In my previous example, I wrote of a student who wanted to lift his
employers templates, make 1 or 2 changes, and sell them to competitors. Is
that wrong? It is exactly the situation we are talking about except we
didn't make the templates. And we are going to make money off the effort
paid for by someone else.

I think it is unethical to do it. It is something I teach my student not to
do. My opinion.

sharon

Sharon Burton-Hardin
President of the Inland Empire chapter of the STC
www.iestc.org
Anthrobytes Consulting
Home of RoboNEWS(tm), the unofficial RoboHELP newsletter
www.anthrobytes.com
Check out www.WinHelp.net!
See www.sharonburton.com!

-----Original Message-----
From: Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU <TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>
Date: Friday, 02 April, 1999 10:47 PM
Subject: Re: Styles for User Guides


|> Sharon Burton writes:
|> >I do agree that people will ask for a manual that looks like someone
|> else.
|> >And that there is not ethical problem with creating one that looks
|> like
|> >someone else's.
|
|Over the years we've had a tremendous number of clients who, when asked
about
|the look of their pages, say "Make it like Microsoft."  They want their
docs to
|look "legitimate," and making it look somewhat like a Microsoft manual
gives it
|that kind of legitimacy.  There have been a few clients who've insisted on
|something really special, but for the most part people want a pretty
general,
|ubiquitous look.
|
|And don't a lot of us start with the standard Frame or Word templates?
Sure we
|add things or change things for particular applications or particular
clients,
|but there's nothing copyrighted about the templates that come with the word
|processing package, other than the overall copyright that applies to the
|software.
|
|Get real, folks.  A template is a guide, not rules stamped in concrete.
There
|will be situations where you have to change the way a Figure number gets
|computed because it doesn't like the letters in your appendices, or
situations
|where a table has to be adjusted in order to get complete lines of screen
text
|on a single line - all of those are adjustments to a general guide. But
you're
|still using the same template. Just because one client wants a 2" indent
from
|the left page edge doesn't mean you can't ever use that same measurement
again.
|
|Elna Tymes
|Los Trancos Systems
|
|
|From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000==
|
|


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=