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Janice wrote
<Every once in a while, a discussion about how/when to document the
buttons and screens of a GUI pops up here. From time to time, people
advocate a thorough description of the GUI, figuring that with full-text
search people can find what they need, and what they want is to be able
to find descriptions when they're looking at dialog boxes.>
Sometimes you just need to document all the fields etc, nothing more.
Many moons ago I worked on documenting a sonar system for the navy. The
UG effectively became a reference manual as we were told by the navy
that we couldn't tell them how to use it, only what it could do!
On a related note, while it was on trials, we got a call about a problem
they had. When the chief designer asked what they were doing when the
problem arose the response he got was 'we can't tell you'!!
About 5 weeks later he called and said 'You were doing X, weren't you?'.
It went very quiet and they asked how he knew that - he pointed out that
he'd designed the system and, after going through it, decided that was
the only thing they could have been doing to get that particular problem
and that they'd have saved themselves 5 weeks if they'd told him at the
start. Fortunately they were paying for the support :-)
Damien Braniff
Sr. Technical Writer
damienb -at- asg -dot- com
Waterfront Plaza
8, Lagan Bank Road
Belfast, N. Ireland BT1 3LR
Tel: +44 (0) 28.9072.3124
Fax: +44 (0) 28.9072.3324
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