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Subject:RE: Two interfaces, one product From:Bill Swallow <bill_swallow -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Wed, 3 May 2000 13:43:15 -0700 (PDT)
Scott,
I was in a similar situation. My former employer was
shipping a product with both a character-based
interface and a GUI. You could freely toggle between
both (why you'd want to...).
Anyhow, the product was huge, so we could only afford
to document one interface. We sent the question up the
pipe... since marketing was playing up the GUI, we
were told to document that. Then the GUI didn't work,
so we documented the character interface. Then the GUI
worked, then we had permission problems... we ended up
documenting the character-based interface with the
exception of a few modules that were specifically
developed as GUI.
So... what have you learned? What have I learned? What
was I saying?...
Oh... how big is your project? Is it an off-the-shelf
product or an order-by-order product? If you have the
time and resources, document a set for each.
Otherwise, go with marketing. And if all else fails,
provide audio cassettes. ;-)
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