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Subject:Re: Metrics From:Mike Christie <mikec -at- SYNTEL -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 9 Aug 1994 10:19:08 EST
Steve Fouts quotes:
>Overall, [Microsoft's] documentation is good, except where they
>happily tell you about features that don't work. Most of my calls to
>software companies are because of program flaws, not because the
>documentation didn't cover something.
and then he replies:
>Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, Barb, but in my book, if I
>happily tell your customer about a feature that doesn't work, that's
>a document flaw.
Thing is, documentation must go to press 3 to 4 weeks before the software has
to go to the disk duplicator. You don't think developers are telling the tech
writers "Oh, that'll be working by the time the code's frozen. No problem. In
fact, I know exactly how I'm going to do it....yeah, that's the ticket, I know
*exactly* how I'm going to do it...."
If management says "Document it...we *are* shipping the product with that
feature" - it's not the tech pubs dept's fault that the programmers couldn't
get it to work!
Mike Christie
Technical Writer
Syntelligence Systems, Inc.
mikec -at- syntel -dot- com
