Electronic Documentation

Subject: Electronic Documentation
From: Ann Balaban <annb -at- DADD -dot- TI -dot- COM>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 10:13:14 CDT

>> Well, this is a _discussion_ group, so here goes.

To ???
Regarding your message about the tail wagging the dog, have you ever used
electronic documentation?

I've seen some antiquated ED systems that I would agree are inadequate
compared to paper documentation. But the most popular current systems are
very slick and offer some tremendous advantages over paper (from a USER'S
standpoint). The biggest advantage is ease of finding the information you
need. The search features on a good system let you find the info you need
in the blink of an eye-- much faster than sorting through a pile of big
books (even if they have decent indexes and TOCs, which is rare).

Other advantages include:
* Ability to add your own notes and bookmarks that are not lost when the
book is updated (with a paper copy, you'd have to recopy your notes).

* Ability to link your online info to your software applications and use it
for help.

* Ability to call other programs from your online info.

* If you distribute your information online, it is always current. Users
often keep old, out-of-date paper copies around.

* If you have a worldwide organization, you can get online information to
all of your users MUCH faster than you can get paper copies delivered.
(For example, one of our offices is in India. It generally takes
anywhere from two weeks to two months to get a book to them; it takes
only a few minutes to load their information online.)

Electronic/online documentation solves most of the problems our users
complain about the most-- they can't find the info they need in the books,
they don't know when the books have been updated, it takes too long for them
to get the books in the mail. (When we stopped supporting our online system
while searching for a new one, we started getting a lot of complaints.)

I prefer electronic/online documentation-- the only problem with it is that
you can't read it on a bus.

Regards, Submitted for KA by:
Kathlyn Auten annb -at- dadd -dot- ti -dot- com
Texas Instruments
(I will forward any responses to Kathlyn, since her e-mail
doesn't seem to work.)


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