Re: Short Manuals

Subject: Re: Short Manuals
From: WandaJane Philips <wandajp -at- ANDYNE -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 15:51:13 -0400

We have a standard set of guides, we're still working on the descriptions, but we have not moved to tiny manuals for the sake of tiny manuals.
We ship up to five manuals (including online help as 1 manual). A tutorial for getting users familiar with the basic concepts and program interface attributes. A user's guide for more detailed information. A reference guide for highly detailed functional information. The online help is both context-sensitive reference information linked to and co-existing with task-based instructions.

WandaJane Phillips
Senior Technical Writer -- Pablo Team
Andyne Computing Limited
wandajp -at- andyne -dot- com

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From: Melinda M. Carr[SMTP:melindac -at- CAPSOFT -dot- COM]
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 1996 4:25 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
Subject: Short Manuals

I received Word 95 last week and was surprised at the new manual, which
is much shorter than my Word 6 manual. The only step-by-step
procedures that I saw as I skimmed were in the installation section.

Are your companies moving to shorter manuals? Are you relegating
step-by-steps to the helps? How have your customers responded? How do you
decide what to leave in and what to eliminate?

Melinda (melindac -at- capsoft -dot- com)

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