Re: How do I document vaporware?

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

And then they'll decide not to buy the software now and
wait for the "future development" features to be released . 
That's what I would do, and yes, I obtain documents or
evaluation versions for software and read them before I 
buy, because my track record on software is that I end 
up not buying about 90% of products I evaluate.

I would format the references to unimplemented features
as hidden text.  Nobody outside of your development
team should have any idea that anyone in the team has
even thought of them until they're ready for at least a
beta release.

Does your company not have a Marketing department...?

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sarah Stegall" <sstegall -at- bivio -dot- net>


> Having spent half a week taking all references to a certain feature OUT
> of our software documentation, I am now informed that these references
> are "placeholders" for future development. This means that when our
> users (other software developers) browse through the command line
> interface or the help menu, they are going to find undocumented commands
> (that don't currently do anything anyway). 
> 
> There's no telling when these "features" are actually going to be
> implemented (software design plan? We don't need no stinking plan...).
> What would be the best way to mention these in user documentation? I am
> afraid our users will be very confused when they happen across
> undocumented commands. Has anyone else had to deal with this? Thanks for
> any feedback.

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