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At 6:12 PM 7/28/95, Chet Ensign wrote:
>Marc Paquette asks:
>>> The challenges come from the documentation perspective. How do we document
>>> the common elements in the environment and the platform- and
>>> language-specific tools without being redundant?
>When faced with a similar problem a while back, we tried system icons in the
>left margin to mark system or platform specific chunks of text.
That's a good idea! Thanks. That'll really help users.
> It worked
>reasonably well in several cases. However, most of the content of our
>stuff was
>common. The system specific pieces were minor command syntax differences, etc.
>If you have major differences between the platforms, there may be no
>alternative but to publish separate manuals for each.
Actually, it's a combination of both: a platform will occasionally affect
some common feature in a small way, but each platform can have differences
that are too great to delineate with just an icon in a margin.
For this upcoming release, we're going to put everything into a single
manual, but only for technical reasons. FrameMaker will only generate hot
links for Acrobat if everthing's in a single book. < sigh >
Thanks for the help. We never even thought of using icons! :-P
Regards,
Marc.
---
Marc Paquette internet: paquette -at- metrowerks -dot- ca
Technical Writer, "Lead Lead Pipe Fitter" voice: (514) 747-5999 ext. 232
metrowerks inc. fax: (514) 747-2822
