RE: maintaining a list of changes in User Guides between versions

["Sarah Bouchier" <Sarah -dot- Bouchier -at- exony -dot- com>]

My documents are held in a version control system; every time I change
something I therefore have to check out and check in with a change
description, even if that's only 'minor stylistic changes' or
'reformatted because I'm an eejit who mucked up the setup of the Word
numbering'

This access to a revision history has been /very helpful/ on various
occasions; when I received a complaint that certain items that should
have been removed from the online help (which uses the same source as
the User Guide) had made their way back in, I was able to go through the
revision history and track down that they'd never been removed; instead
of asking the technical author responsible (we used to be a team of two)
to make the changes, the developers had simply written the build script
to omit those items, and when the help was edited to shift some of the
files around it had, of course, broken the 'fix'.

Without a revision history, I might never have worked out what had
happened and thus known to have the necessary chat with the developers
about information flow :)

If someone asked me for a list of changes I'd simply go through the
revision history and pick out everything significant.

I thought using version control was fairly standard?

----------------------------------------- 
Sarah Bouchier 
Technical Author 

exony 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or
printed documentation. Features include single source authoring, team authoring,
Web-based technology, and PDF output. http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

Now shipping: Help & Manual 4 with RoboHelp(r) import! New editor,
full Unicode support. Create help files, web-based help and PDF in up
to 106 languages with Help & Manual: http://www.helpandmanual.com

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40infoinfocus.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.