Re: About mil/heavy industries documentation standards (long)

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net> wrote on 02/12/2004 01:16:26 PM:
> The discussion here is about a standard and whether the 
> standard would be improved by making it more complete.

Well, the discussion/question was about why it was left out of the 
standard.

The reason is simple. When the standards committee sits down to make sure 
Aircraft stop falling out of the sky, where do they devote their time? 
Standardising how the manual looks, or standardising what it contains?

Time permitting, having the standards committee point to other references 
may be a good help. And indeed for warnings, symbols, and other 
conventions, standards do exist. This is why any contract worth its salt 
will refer to numerous standards and not just one. For example, the 
information standard for the industry may be accepted worldwide, but the 
"European" ISO standards for warnings placards may not be acceptable to a 
North-American client.

However the way in which information is presented and how the 
system/superstructure for gathering, storing, and presenting the 
standardised content is set up is what differentiates the efficiency, 
cost, and branding of the various documentation vendors and aircraft 
maintenance facilities.

Eric L. Dunn
Senior Technical Writer