Re: Documenting interactive configuration - HELP!

Subject: Re: Documenting interactive configuration - HELP!
From: "Pro TechWriter" <pro -dot- techwriter -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "neilson -at- windstream -dot- net" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:29:05 -0500

What about a flow chart? Could you break it out by functional groups
(instead of screens) and either do flows with decisions, or if...then..
statements (or tables)?

Sometimes if a process is very complicated, I start with a flow chart
anyway, before I start writing. It's especially useful to use post-it notes
and a whiteboard, if the process is very complex.

Hope this helps.
PT


On 2/21/07, neilson -at- windstream -dot- net <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net> wrote:


I'm looking for ideas here... I'm documenting the configuration of dozens
of different kinds of software that are used on the company's computers.
Most of the them use some sort of configuration script or XML or whatever.
To document the configuration I can include the file or refer to it, or
include a portion of it, possibly with explanations.

One program, however, is configured interactively. The configuration seems
to consist of whatever the tech typed into the config screens as they went
past his eyes.

I tried writing up a precis of the answers that differed from the default,
and it's horribly confusing. The obvious alternative, a book full of screen
shots (95 of them--they're hard to see, and a lot of them are nearly
identical), would be next to useless.

Has any of you ever successfully attacked this problem? What did you do?

I'm hoping there's a tool or command to produce a config listing, and that
our tech has merely not discovered it yet. I cannot see how the software
vendor could develop a product for which a config listing could not be
produced.

Thanks,
--Peter Neilson
laboring somewhere in North Carolina, probably under a delusion.

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Documenting interactive configuration - HELP!: From: neilson

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