Are those places still in business? It's my understanding that time is of
the essence...
Anyway, thanks to those who corroborated (was it some Davids?) how
manuals are really made....
> Let me know who this manufacturer is - might be a good idea to
> stay away from their products until the third or fourth release.
I would do that in any case with Microsoft or any of them (tho friend was
freelance, said they all do it).
You list a number of causes of terrible manuals:
> 1) the product was not adequately spec'ed in the first place
> 2) the manual designers and editors (not the writers, necessarily) don't
> have a technical and educational writing background. Being able to use a
> spell checker should NEVER be the only qualification for a technical
> writer.
> 3) the design and testing process takes so many shortcuts that they're
> designing and fixing featurs even as the shipping containers are beng
> queued up.
You leave out one seems to me as important as any of the others if not
moreso -- the people writing the manual know all of it to begin with and
never test on someone who doesn't. They simply do not have a clue when
they're not being clear... (to put it mildly).
Judy