Tip of the month from
PRC
January 1997
Current trends for manuals
Edited 1 January
1997
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Tip of the month is edited by Peter Ring, PRC (Peter Ring Consultants, Denmark)
- consultants
on how to write user friendly manuals
Contents
- Formal demands on national
language and safety
- Growing understanding
of user friendliness
- From: Linguistic or technical
orientation => Holistic and pedagogic orientation
- More GUI (Graphic User
Interface) => the build in manual
- Software: Help => HTML
(or. full SGML) with full-text search, more hyperlinks and more (animated)
graphics. Made by the technical writer in collaboration with the designers/technicians.
- Machines, etc: Display
with context dependent button texts. Made by the technicians, preferably
in collaboration with a good technical writer.
- Multimedia manuals
- In addition to paper manual,
if the media is not controlled
- Consumers: Video and
CD-ROM, on sight Internet (cable modem)
- B2B market: CD-ROM, Intranet,
on sight Internet ( - do. )
If you disagree
with these ideas - or have other relevant points or ideas +/-, please
e-mail me
!
Ideas for new "Tip of the month" subjects are very welcome, too!
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