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Subject:Re: Generic and device specific docs From:Lou Quillio <quillio -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 28 Mar 2005 16:47:36 -0500
On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 12:59:21 -0800 (PST), J C
<tech_writer_girl -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> What do you think those "somethings" could/should be?
> Appendices within the Generic Device Software doc?
> Quick Start Guides? Whitepapers? (They call anything
> that isn't a manual or a quick start a whitepaper,
> just so you know. I don't know if I can convince them
> different. Pick my battles, right?)
Quick start. These are user docs.
I'd invert the thing. Start with one doc. Chapter II is the whole
story for Device "A" (as though there aren't any others), Chapter III
is the same stand-alone story for Device "B", etc. What's truly
common and makes sense to modularize will become clear to you, but
keep going until you've covered all the devices.
The risk here is that modularizing the content is at this point an
abstraction. Maybe it's possible, and works for users. Maybe it's
possible but doesn't work. Once it's all down -- and you're
copy-pasting like a madwoman, so it's no extra work for you -- the
content will tell you and the boss if his abstraction idea makes
sense.
I don't think you can enjoin the project with his hoped-for economies
as a condition. It's not really any harder for you to go the long way
'round and, at the end, you may just save the boss from himself if his
modularization idea falls flat in the real world.
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