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Subject:Plus and minus signs--a rehash From:"Kubrin, Andy" <AKubrin -at- FEICO -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 7 Oct 2002 12:31:18 -0600
Thanks to everyone who responded to my post about plus and minus signs.
The + and - I'm referring to are GUI controls, not keyboard buttons. The
application is an operating system for electron- and ion-beam microscopes,
and these buttons appear in several places in the GUI. In the two
instances I'm documenting now, the buttons appear next to read-only
fields, and you click them to step through an index of aperture settings
or a range of beam voltage values. In function, they are analagous to the
up/down controls for Word margin settings, which David Cooper mentioned.
The simplest thing turns out to be, well, the simplest thing. I show the
dialog box with callouts to identify these buttons and state their
function. After that I write "Click + or - to step through the range of
available kV settings." The text references occur within two pages of the
dialog box illustrations, so I can count on users having seen that part.
Thanks for all your suggestions. They definitely helped me find the
solution.
Best,
Andy
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Andy Kubrin
Senior Technical Writer
FEI Company
503-640-7694
akubrin -at- feico -dot- com
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