Re: TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY

[Damien Braniff <Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

While I agree that formatting etc is important, I still feel that the
content IS by far the most important.  Even in the days of pencil and paper
I was still essentially responsible for the layout.  Typists had the
"style" (fonts for body text, heading and so on) but it was still up to the
author to decide how it looked - white space, where heading, diagrams, page
breaks etc went.  This can be done well or badly much as now - all that has
changed is the "how it's done".  But even bad layout can be tolerated if
the content is there (not desirable I agree!).  More than once I've
ploughed through badly formatted docs to find information simply because
there was nothing else available.  You grumbled about the format but, as
long as you found what you wanted, it was just a grumble.  If you didn't
find what you wanted then you really complained.  Remember the early
computer books - everything was there, just horrible to use.

Fortunately things are changing and producers have come to realise the
benefit of well written (includes well designed) docs.  Still there are
those around who give the profession a bad name.  At one company (I had
recently started) we were documenting sonar equipment.  A "expert"
contractor was brought in to produce some overviews/guidelines for the
authors.  What he produced LOOKED wonderful but, even to a sonar novice
like me, the content was so much gobbledegook (?) - he didn't last very
long.

I guess what I'm saying is that content is paramount, followed by layout
etc.   Good layout etc + poor content = rubbishy, unusable manual; good
content + poor layout etc = poor manual, but tolerable if there is nothing
else; good content + good layout etc = good manual.


Damien Braniff
Technical Author
PAC International