[Coco] First experiences with my DE1

[Arthur Flexser]

I was going to disagree as well, but now that Al has done so, I'll just add
my voice to his.  Some developers are lousy manual writers, and some are
very good at it.
For the lousy ones, the problem might sometimes be that they are too close
to the product and assume incorrectly that readers grasp something that
they find obvious.  Other times, it might be that writing with clarity is
just not one of their skills.  In-depth familiarity with the product
would be a strength for a manual writer rather than a handicap in many
cases.  If feedback on the documentation is sought while the product is in
the beta stage, many shortcomings can readily be remedied.

Art


On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Al Hartman <alhartman6 at optonline.net>wrote:

> I don't agree.  I wrote the user interface and the manual for the CoCo
> Greeting Card Designer, and many other Zebra products.
>
> What you have to do is sit down with the product on one side, and your
> word processor on the other and simply go through the steps of using the
> product explaining each decision point and the consequences of making each
> choice.
>
> Then, you can do a step by step straight through walkthrough of bringing
> up the product using the defaults as a quick start guide.
>
> It's easy. My manuals always get well reviewed as being thorough and easy
> to understand.
>
> -[ Al ]-
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Mark McDougall
>
> The developer should never, ever write documentation for users, or other
> developers, and there's very good reason for it. It's not the fault of the
> developer, but of the process.
>
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