TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Displaying front panel in the manual? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 24 Sep 2002 08:42:05 -0400
Bhuvnesh Jain reports: <<I am writing manual for a electrical product and I
want to give a feeling of our front panel in the manual. I can give a
photograph of the front panel and can discribe each control like push button
and relays etc or can create figure with wmf images. Which you think may be
the best from user perspective ?? >>
Where you are trying to focus on the positions of the individual controls
and not (for example) the color of the faceplate, a drawing is usually more
effective than a photograph. A skilled photographer can often achieve just
as good an effect, particularly for simple images that lack distracting
background details, but as you know, good photographs can be hard to create
and difficult to print properly.
<<but some people in my oragnisation argue that it is always good to give
photgraph when giving control details.>>
There's nothing wrong with doing both, but if you have limited resources and
can't do that, the drawing is probably simpler and more effective. One
helpful trick I've used in the past is to place such drawings on a fold-out
page so that you can have the image visible beside the pages of the main
manual while you're reading the instructions. This reduces or eliminates the
need to repeat the image throughout the text, and greatly minimizes the
amount of page flipping the reader must do.
<<Please also suggest a site from where I can dowmload wmf images of various
electronic and electrical control and accessories.>>
You could probably find these with a Web search, but if you're going to do
lots of these kinds of drawings, you should invest in the Visio software. It
has a library of images you can use to build specific types of drawings. If
that's not in your budget, you can always scan a photo of the control panel
then use standard drawing software to trace the important features.
--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
"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can
think."--Edwin Schlossberg, designer (1945- )
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Experience RoboHelp X3! This new RoboHelp release combines single sourcing,
print-quality documentation, conditional text and much more, into the most
monumental release of RoboHelp ever! http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
FrameMaker-to-PDF TimeSavers Assistants let you enhance & automate navigation
in PDF doc sets (chapter tabs, next/prev chapter/pg, bookmarks, popup menus);
create interactive PDF forms, rollover popups; presentations: http://www.microtype.com
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
