Re: Good/bad docs

[Steve Pendleton <SPendlet -at- COGNEX -dot- COM>]

>Really good documentation seems to me to be a third-party product, for
>the most part. If there's a software package I want to either master
>or learn as quickly as possible, I go find a good book on it. They
>are consistently better than the in-house docs.

Was the third-party market originally driven by SW piracy?
I've assumed that people stole the SW but not the book,
which the SW vendor naturally wouldn't distribute by itself.
The millions of people with pirate software then became an
entrepreneurial opportunity for the publishers of the third-party
books. The in-house writers now have out-house competitors.

Microsoft has turned this situation on its ear by turning
the Microsoft Press into a profit center. Back when all books were
paper and management was horrified by the production cost,
many of us were pressured to try to regain the costs somehow.
Only MS seems to have actually made it work. Most bookstores
sell a whole slew of MS Press books, and most of us own some
of them. Rather than lose the book profit along with the SW profit,
MS choose to sell documentation by itself.

Anyone in the SW biz care to comment on the economic
interaction between in-house and third-party books? Do SW
vendors hate it because it encourages piracy, or do welcome it
as a chance to cut costs by reducing the quality of their own
documentation? Does it harm the in-house writers?

Steve Pendleton, Technical Writer DeLuxe
Cognex, Acumen Products
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"


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