Re: API documentation

[John Kohl <sasjqk -at- SABLE -dot- UNX -dot- SAS -dot- COM>]

In article <19980806230051 -dot- 7842 -dot- qmail -at- hotmail -dot- com>, Jennifer Rippel
<jlrippel -at- HOTMAIL -dot- COM> writes:
|> I am a rather new technical writer, and my first project is to document
|> the API for a library of C++ functions.
|>
[snip]
|> So, my questions are:
|>
|> * How do you gather information for a project such as this? Is it normal
|> to have to write this from scratch, or is it reasonable to request
|> written information from the programmers that I can then rewrite,
|> format, etc., and which would take a shorter period of time?
|>
|> * Is my manager expecting too much too soon? Or am I expecting too
|> little--that is, should I be accomplishing more, in a shorter time
|> frame?

I think it is unreasonable for your manager to expect you to write this
kind of information from scratch.  Your software developers should be
developing from "specs" (specifications, design docs), so they should at
least be able to provide those to you.  If they don't have specs, then I
would think they'd have some other kind of notes or info that they could
give you, and/or (preferably) they should write up something that is
fairly complete that you can then rework as necessary.

It's very inefficient for your company to expect you to pull this kind
of information out of thin air.

BTW, despite previous flames, I think your questions are quite
reasonable.


John Kohl


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