Re: Paper Manual to Online Help - where to start?

[suzy -dot- davis -at- doi -dot- vic -dot- gov -dot- au]

I agree Suzanne

I too think they are being a little optimistic about these docs being
updateable by general staff to their current standard.

I have advised them that when documentation is not the focus of a person's
role then it is very difficult for them to update documentation to the
extent required.  They will only generally update the documents as they
think is required - for example, if they are a supervisor, they will ensure
that all the user manual is udpated with any changed procedures but
probably won't think much about updating the Functional Specification.  A
developer is likely to highlight that a change needs to be reflected in the
Functional Specification but not be so aware of the user manual's update
requirements.

I have recommended that as way of keeping their documentation costs down
that they either hire a technical writer every six months to update the
manuals with the recent changes, or update the documents in house, but hire
a technical writer once a year or every 18 months to revise, update and
edit the changes.

thanks for the feedback.  They seem a bit sceptical about my advice -  I
guess no one understands documentation requirements unless you do it.
Suzy





<snip>
A few thoughts. First, even though the "users" can easily update Word or
some other wp tool, you will still need at least an editor to fix
styles, grammar, and do the conversion, won't you? Unless someone does
that stuff for a living, he or she usually doesn't do it thoroughly or
well, in my 20-some years of experience.

Second, if they already have Word and don't use it properly, why in the
world would anyone expect them to learn anything else (especially
RoboHelp -- pretty big learning curve)?

I say go with PDFs, because you can have everything you want via
bookmarks for the TOC and cross-refs and hyperlinks created in Word.
There are many conversion tools, but I would hope that the finalization
and conversion would not be done by random "users" but by an editor.
Plus the end users will be able to print the manuals if they like
complete with page numbers and all.

Sue McKinney
Senior Programmer/Analyst
(tech writer, editor, coordinator, proofreader and whatever else is
needed!) smckinney -at- eei1 -dot- com






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