Providing fully customizable online Help? (Take II)

Subject: Providing fully customizable online Help? (Take II)
From: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 14:26:01 -0400


Jim Shaeffer suggested that I "glossed over this phrase from the original
poster": <<complete with forms, dialog boxes, and menu
commands that we would never have foreseen.>>

True enough. I assumed that the original poster meant that the developers
know all existing interface objects, but have no clear idea how they will be
combined in practice--rather than assuming that the users could create
interface objects nobody had ever seen before. In hindsight, not necessarily
a good assumption, but if true, the task is very similar to documenting a
programming language's API, and checking the archives for information using
related keywords could provide additional insights.

But as Jim suggests, if the software is more protean than I imagined, this
is a truly intractable documentation problem.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
Hofstadter's Law--"The time and effort required to complete a project are
always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's
Law."


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