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Subject:on-line vs. hard copy From:Melissa Hunter-Kilmer <mhunterk -at- BNA -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:49:48 EST
Guys,
Summary:
Please send me private e-mail arguments as to why you can't just
take a hard-copy doc and throw it on line to produce on-line doc.
It would be done in Lotus Notes, if that helps.
**** Send it quickly! My manager is breathing down my neck!****
Excruciatingly drawn-out explanation:
The current incarnation of a software project has been under way
for about two years. It is for in-house users, and it is
scheduled to go live in seven weeks. At the beginning of the
project, my co-workers and I tried to convince our boss to let us
do real on-line doc via RoboHelp or one of its ilk. We were told
that we would do that after go-live. Our boss also wanted us to
do it on Lotus Notes, which to me seems rather like taking a prom
dress and retrofitting it for horseback-riding -- it can be done,
but it's smarter just to get the right riding outfit to begin
with.
Now our boss has suddenly gotten excited about on-line doc. She
gets this way periodically; she leaves us pretty much to manage
ourselves, and then she gets these crazes. Last week it was job
aids. I'm hoping to hold her to that one, because it will be
useful.
She wants us to throw the whole 500-page document, with all its
pictures etc., on line on Lotus Notes. If it is too complicated
to do that, "we can get a temp to help for a day or two." This
would be *instead* of an index, not in addition to it. And --
get this -- she says that the on-line doc would also be _instead_
of the hard-copy doc.
In other words, she is Not Getting It. Please, please, please
send me polite, cogent arguments on why we should do on-line as a
different project; why we need to use real help authoring tools
rather than Lotus Notes; why this is important enough to do
right.
Thanks very much!
Melissa Hunter-Kilmer
mhunterk -at- bna -dot- com
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