Re: Electronic Document

[Chuck Banks <chuck -at- ASL -dot- DL -dot- NEC -dot- COM>]

Irene,

        As the one who started the definition mess, or who tried to
clear it up, here are a few more thoughts and experiences that I how
will help.

     Electronic Documentation IS a dumping of soft copies of a
     document set to CD-ROM for reading and printing by a software
     package (such as COMPASS).  The documents are NOT reformatted
     for the screen.  Indexing is done using a special editor
     program (for now -- many hope SGML will make this unnecessary).
     Documents can be paged, index searched, or brute force searched.
     Users have the option of reading the text off screen or printing
     it.  The document files are actually print images (like postscript
     files) and cannot be altered by the user.

     Online Documentation encompasses online help, hypertext, multi-
     media, etc.  Online documentation is designed for the screen
     and may or may not be printed.  Regardless, it's format is
     80x25 rather than 8.5x11 or A4 or whatever paper size you use.
     Some online documentation software, like help systems, allow
     the writer to key the document to a software package for
     context-sensitive help, instruction, explanation -- what has
     been termed performance support.

        Electronic Documentation is being delivered to customers as a
convenience.  Electronic Documentation allows users of large document
sets to have their desks back.  Instead of walls and desktops full of
binders and paper documents, the customer has a networked CD-ROM
drive and a vendor supplied CD-ROM disk.  In time, this application
of computer and text technology may give way to true online
documentation, but not for a while.  Electronic Documentation is
usually cheaper and faster to produce than Online Documentation, and
Electronic Documentation is not so different than the paper documents
it replaces.  Users appear to be comfortable with it for now.

        As for estimates of project length, depending on the software
used, Electronic Documentation takes only slightly longer than it takes
to index a document set.  Say a production rate of 5 to 10 pages per
day.

        Online Documentation is a complete redesign and, possibly,
rewrite of a document set.  You must add hypertext cross reference
links and external links to product supported.  Your SMEs must
review the technical content as if for a new document.  Since you
are creating a software package, it must be tested to ensure links
function properly and formating is correct.  One estimate I saw
recently called for a production rate of 1 to 2 pages per day.  A
5 to 10-fold decrease in throughput over paper or electronic
documents.  Now you know why programmers rate themselves in lines
of code per day rather than number of modules or objects per day.

        So, for Electronic Documentation, you are indexing a nearly
finished document set.  For Online Documentation, you are creating a
new documentation set almost from scratch.

Best Regards!

Chuck Banks
--
__        ________     ______
|\\   |  ||          //              Chuck Banks
| \\  |  ||_______  ||               Senior Technical Writer
|  \\ |  ||         ||               NEC America, Inc.
|   \\|   \\______   \\______        E-Mail:      chuck -at- asl -dot- dl -dot- nec -dot- com
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