Re: Chapter Overviews
I work with Donna and Carla. I am the writer who believes we need to keep an element similar to About This Document in the front matter. These are the reasons I endorse keeping this section, or one similar to it, in our guides:
1. upper-management wants us to produce usable documentation. This piece provides the audience with information about the guide before they delve into the meat of the guide.
"Delve into the meat?"
Typically, when users pick up a User Guide, they need to find out how to do something. Now. An About This Document section does not get them there. At all. (Indexes do, however.)
If upper management wants usable documentation, they will hire an indexer.
Perhaps someone should inform upper management that, for the most part, only reviewers (and sometimes upper management) read User Guides from front to back. I know it sounds kind if weird, but User Guides aren't for reading. They are, however, for providing information. There's a difference.
And here's another question: Why would someone want to know "information about the guide:" meta-information. Would they rather not know if the guide contains the information they seek?
2. I've done some investigating and it appears to be a common practice (standard). Of the books on my desk, be it a programming guide, reference guide, or user based guide, each guide offers a similar section for their audience, as follows: Who Should Read This Book (2 have this heading), Intended Audience (this is in a technical SNMP book), How Is This Book Organized? (3 have this heading), How to use this guide, Audience, How To Use This Book, and so on.
Of those books, have you read that section in any of them?
The STC competition, useful as it may be, doesn't measure how people use documentation. It measures how entries measure up to metrics.
In addition, I understand that the winners of the STC competitions are not "the standard", but I think it's a good gauge of what is expected of guides that win those competitions. Of the five books that I have collected that won the 2003 STC competition, each guide offers a topic similar to About This Document, as follows: How This Book Is Organized, About This Book, Using Your Documentation, About This Guide, and This Guide. Again, depending on the style, some list the chapters (as ours currently does), some provide a paragraph or a few paragraphs about the book, et cetera.
OK, I have 35 books on my desk here at work now (a small part of my collection. Let's take a sample.
- "The Design of Everyday Things," Donald A. Norman: No such seciton
- "Web Design in a Nutshell, 2nd Ed.," Jennifer Niederst: A section in the preface, titled Contents, with a sentence for every chapter.
- "Back to the User: Creating User-Focused Web Sites," Sachs & McClain: No such section
- "Paint Shop Pro 8 User Guide": No such section
- "The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse," Shavor, et. al.: No such section, although the Preface does have two sections titled "Intended Audience and Prerequisites" and "How This Book is Organized"
- "Managing Your Documentation Projects," JoAnn. T Hackos: No such section, although the Preface does have a section titled "How should you read this book?"
- "Bugs in Writing: A Guide to Debugging Your Prose, Revised Ed.," Lyn Dupre: No such section
- "More Eric Meyer on CSS," Eric Meyer: No such section
- "JavaScript for the World Wide Web," Negrino & Smith: No such section
--
--
Chuck Martin
User Assistance & Experience Engineer
twriter "at" sonic "dot" net www.writeforyou.com
"I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.
The day may come when the courage of Men fail, when we forsake our
friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day!
This day, we fight!"
- Aragorn
"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you."
- Gandalf
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