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Subject:Re: To number or not to number? From:"Wilcox, John (Contractor)" <wilcoxj -at- WDNI -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:04:00 -0700
----------
From: Matthew J Long
What I wonder now is whether or not I should use the technical manual
numbering format (##.##.##) for each of the sections. When considering
that my audience (my professors would be proud) consists of attorneys
and
paralegals who have a relatively limited knowledge of computers, I
decided
to write the manual for the lowest common denominator....
-----------------
In some former jobs, I used section numbering. There were three good
reasons:
1) The audience was UNIX sysadmins, who were very used to seeing and
using such in UNIX manual sets.
2) There was no easy way to do variable xrefs in straight ASCII help
files and man pages, nor in the primitive versions of word processors
and DTP apps I was using to do the hardcopy docs.
3) The section headings all looked about the same, whether because the
help file was straight ASCII or due to a primitive font set.
Today, even sysadmins have evolved to a higher level of consciousness
than simply following numerical patterns, and every decent word
processor, DTP app, and HAT offers at least one easy way to do xrefs.
So there's no longer a need to write "see section 12.34.5.6" -- just
write "see page 123", where the 123 is generated by the xref.
Certainly, users find it easier to find a page number than a section
number.
Also, there's no shortage of great-looking fonts from which to choose
today. As a typographic convention, varying the font according to
heading level is generally preferable to using numbers. (Also, limiting
the number of levels to 4 max is my rule of thimb.) If I absolutely
must use 5 or more levels of headings, I might use section numbering,
but I doubt it.
Regards,
John Wilcox, Documentation Specialist
Timberlands Information Services
Weyerhaeuser, WWC 2E2
Tacoma, WA 98477-0001 USA
253-924-7972 wilcoxj -at- wdni -dot- com
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