Re: FWD: One User's Guide for Multiple Products

[Sybille Sterk <sybille -at- BOFFIN -dot- BEYOND2000 -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

I used to work on a manual that applied to three different versions of the
program - Lite, Standard and Advanced. Luckily, I didn't have the problem
that some options had implications on others - at least not in a way which
would make the manual very difficult to read.

Our manuals are structured in the following way that you first get to know
what the program does, a quick overview of the user interface and then a
detailed description of the menus and dialogs. At the beginning of the
manual I explained about the three different versions and later on added a
note to each option that was only available to lite, standard or advanced
or a combination of two versions.

This seemed to work alright, at least we didn't have any complaints.

However, if there are complex and complicated structures between the two
versions, I'd suggest two manuals, it'll be easier to work on and in the
end much quicker to update. You can write the Standard version first and
then delete the stuff you don't need for the Lite version and make any
amendments necessary to the second version. When you update them, just copy
and paste the bits that are the same in both versions between the two of them.

In my opionion the approach of a multi-project manual / documentation is
useful if the differences are straight forward, the more complex they are,
though, the more difficult for the user (and the author) to find out what
applies where.

Hope this helps,

Sybille

Sybille Sterk
Technical Author and Translator (German)
email: sybille -at- boffin -dot- beyond2000 -dot- co -dot- uk


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