RE: RE: Indexing style refs

[Maggie Pierce Secara <maggiros -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

But the index also has to be useful, not just accurate.  SO
you have to take into account at least the basic ways you
can think of someone looking up something.

You need both "opening a file" and "files, opening", even
if you don't need to include "tinkering with files".  

I just bought a car, and I wanted to something about how
the alarm system worked.  There was nothing in the owner's
manual under "alarm".  In fact, the only entry that
addressed the alarm at all was "theft-prevention system". 
Oddly enough, I wasn't focussing on theft; I was thinking
of arming/disarming the alarm. (Nothing under "arming"
either.) That's hardly whimsical or frivolous. I only found
the page I wanted by flipping through the book. Once I
figured out what they were calling it, I could look it up
in the index. How nice.

There's a broad space between one and one only entry the
user has to guess and "every off-the-wall whim of everyone
on the face of the earth."  


Maggie Secara





--- John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> wrote:
> 
> You cannot accommodate every user however they want. At a
> certain point, you
> must say no. If my user gets upset because I haven't put
> "way cook button"
> in the index, or if I include 20 synonyms and they can't
> find it because I
> didn't include the 21st one, I say tough. We're here to
> create solid,
> accurate documentation, not to bow to every off-the-wall
> whim of everyone on
> the face of the earth.
> 
> The customer is the customer and the customer ISN'T
> always right.

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