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Subject:Sending customers your doc files? From:geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA Date:Wed, 30 Jul 1997 15:46:50 -0500
Paula Reynolds wrote that her firm <<...has never sent
electronic copies of our manual to our customers, due to
the fear of manipulating the text and perhaps overwriting
some of our safety descriptions and warnings.>> and
<<Marketing wants to go ahead and send them one, and I say
no...either we provide a translation or they can type it in
themselves.>>
I'd say that you've got your head on straight and Legal
would have a fit if they knew what Marketing had planned.
Don't do it unless the customer is willing to sign a
carefully and clearly worded disclaimer. Something like
"we've killed 7 tech. writers making sure that none of your
staff will get killed, so if you modify these docs, on your
head be the bad kharma", only written up properly by a
suitably paranoid lawyer.
The fact that they want to translate the text is even
scarier; based on the translations I've seen by people who
don't know anything about translation but think they do,
that's something I'd really want to control in-house. It
might be worthwhile providing the translation as a free
service to the customer. If you plan to localize your
software, you'll have to pay for the translation anyway, so
giving it to this customer for free won't cost you anything
extra; it _will_ get you lots of goodwill and word of mouth
advertising.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.
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