Re: FWD: Help for installation wizards

[Lydia Wong <lydiaw -at- FPOINT -dot- COM>]

Anonymous,

You are not deluded. It sounds as if you are right on target with your
comments and concerns. Your client seems to have missed the whole idea of
wizards and building help content into the interface (a BIG topic of
presentations at this past February's WinWriter's conference in Seattle).

From discussions and presentations there, I'd say most people are going in
the exact opposite direction from your client. If the interface has the
information, why provide it in the help file (which people resist using
anyway!)?

You didn't mention it, but I have to ask if there are other opportunities in
your area for tech writers. I'm not saying you should abandon ship because
of one or two projects, but if it's possible for you to see down the road,
and future projects will continue to be like this, that's a pretty bleak
road. As a professional, how challenging will it be for you to write
descriptions of things users can see for themselves (and to have your
expertise ignored)? If that were my future, I'd start polishing my resume.
(Unless I just loved my employer and felt it was worth the agony of writing
that stuff to stay at my company.)

Just my two cents!

Lydia
-----------------------------
Lydia Wong
Technical Writer
FarPoint Technologies, Inc.
Morrisville, NC   USA
www.fpoint.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric J. Ray <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU <TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>
Date: Tuesday, July 21, 1998 4:00 p.m.
Subject: FWD: Help for installation wizards


>Name withheld upon request. Please reply on list.
>
>*************************************************
>
>We have a client who has lately been requesting help files for, of all
>things, installation wizards. I asked a lot of questions, made a few
>suggestions on the UI, checked with their customer service personnel,
>provided reasons against it, and was eventually told that my job was to
give
>them what they wanted. If it were just a single help file in English, I
>wouldn't be bothered as much. However, they're localizing this file in 20
>languages. I've tried to educate them about the cost involved, the
>task-based approach to Windows help, the typical practice of including such
>information (with greater detail) in an installation guide or a readme
file,
>and of the problems with trying to compensate for UI problems with
>documentation, but all to no avail.
>
>What's more, instead of taking my suggestion that they limit the help
topics
>to troubleshooting and dialogs that branch, they wanted a topic describing
>precisely what was on every dialog, including how to continue to the next
>topic ("...uh, click Next to continue?"). They even required topics
>explaining how to run the installation and uninstallation routines FROM THE
>COMMAND LINE! And the user won't even be able to get to the help file
unless
>the installer is running.
>
>So now we're being asked to do something very similar for another project
>(same client), except this time, it's an installer that runs over an
>intranet. It'll be WinHelp rather than HTML-based. :-|
>
>These aren't complex applications, and I can do little more than duplicate
>what is already on the dialogs since they're typically pretty verbose. Yet
>the information I think would be helpful (detailed descriptions of the
>components, installation options, and supported models of hardware), they
>don't want because they plan to reuse these files for future products
>(rather than simplify and improve their UI).
>
>This seems insane to me. Am I deluded, or is it becoming more common to
>overdocument like this?
>
>Thanks for your input.
>
>
>