Re: What's with the new docs?

["Huber, Mike" <Mike -dot- Huber -at- SOFTWARE -dot- ROCKWELL -dot- COM>]

An anonymous commentator wrote:
************************************************************************
If you can post this anomously - I'd appreciate it.

My boss has just filled me in on our new product direction (if funded by
our
parent company) that will go as far into the web as we might imagine,
gateways, java etc.  His interesting comment was, "the role of the writer
and the developer will become very "blurred".  After all you are
perfectly
capable of HTML, JAVA and maybe even VRML.  So why not have you do it."
 I
am holding my breath and crossing my fingers for
the funding....sounds like a whole bunch of fun.

But the key comment is "role of the writer and developer is becoming
blurred".
I agree....
*************************************************************************

Having spent the last week at a Visual Basic class myself, I agree. It
appears
that I have an opportunity to do some work on the front end of the
software I'm
documenting. This fits in very well with my view of the software world:
the most
important part of the documentation is the user interface. (I developed
this view,
along with my penchant for using too many parenthesis, when I was a
programmer in the 1980's.)

Software has to communicate with people. When the software fails to
communicate, the person falls back on (ideally) the help system. When
that
fails, the person falls back (again, ideally) on the manual, and then the
tech
support line.

So I have this great opportunity to jump into the front of the process,
and keep
people out of the help files!

With a little luck and effort, I may be able to steer the terminology
toward
regular English from the other side of the screen. Maybe even prevent
adding
yet another new meaning to the word "database".

 ---
Mike Huber