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>Having said that, there probably are audiences
>when the former approach is betters. Were the
>documentation for the datalogger being written
>for people who have to know how the system
actually works, rather than for people who have
>to use it, then all the stuff about
>intermediary hardware would be not only helpful,
>but essential.
But there is a right time and a wrong time to present this information. It
would be inappropriate to present that level of detail in the middle of a
step by step procedure to get from point A to point Z. However, in that
process, it would be OK to include a comment that to find out more detailed
information about some point to go to a different section.
1) Do this
2) Click that
3) Do another thing (for details on what happens when you do this, see
section 5, page 435)
4) Do this thing also.
I think this comes back to a discussion held in this list a few weeks ago
about whether it was better to instruct or to guide. My position is that you
should give both, but not intermixed.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
"Alright, nobody move! I've got a dragon here, and I'm not afraid to use it"
---------- Donkey
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