RE: OT? Vintage manuals

[Stuart Burnfield <sburnf -at- au1 -dot- ibm -dot- com>]

Speaking of vintage manuals, the software product whose manuals I've been
working on has been in continuous development for 31 years. There can't be
too many other software manuals still going after that long...

I've noticed an interesting effect relating to old products and manuals: if
there's a reference to something that became obsolete fairly recently ( <
10 years) it's fairly easy to find and remove. If a reference manages to
stay in the manuals for longer than that, it tends to stay indefinitely,
because TWs and reviewers no longer recognise it as an old product--it just
looks like another acronym that could relate to a live but obscure niche
product.

I've become pretty adept at spotting phrases that indicate anachronisms,
such as references to 'the new interface', 'as before', you can now...'.

Stuart

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