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Re: SME Edits (was Re: InDesign as a FrameMaker substitute?)
Subject:Re: SME Edits (was Re: InDesign as a FrameMaker substitute?) From:Martin Bosworth <martinhbosworth -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 16 Aug 2005 10:50:57 -0400
On 8/16/05, Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com> wrote:
>
> It's not only off-shore engineers, I've had more than my share of
> US-born and US-based engineers with degrees from prestigious US schools
> get bogged down on the placement of a period (does it go inside a quote
> or outside) yet completely miss glaring technical errors in the same
> sentence. I remember one that would include pages of grammatical
> corrections keyed to selected text, each with the English language rule
> defining why the text in question was wrong. Yet, this same person
> would miss the wrong version of a dialogue box (a dialogue box that he
> designed incidentally) used for the illustration that the text in
> question referenced. It was humorous after a while and became the
> subject of many happy hour conversations.
Here's my favorite:
Reviewing a very complex and cumbersome system with lots of mistakes
and very little documentation, and being told I'll need to do a lot of
work to cover everything.
So I design a very complex and detailed manual that explains every
error in context and enables users to "work around" any problems they
encounter.
I also design a quickie two-page instruction sheet just so users can
log in and do their thing.
Come to find out the engineers and project managers all prefer the
quickie guide, because it's "easier to understand."
As if *I* designed the faulty system in the first place. Nope, sorry.
I just write here. :)
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