QTR-Quadtone RIP

One of the best approaches to writing a manual is to organize all the questions
you would like answered into a coherent flow. I am sure if you did so, others on
this group would help fill out the detail. Your experience in writing manuals
should be of great help in this endeavor, just put in place marks for the things
you don't know.


-Stephen
 www.sbillard.org/Stephen

-----Original Message-----
From: QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com [mailto:QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Daniel
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 10:45 AM
To: QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [QuadtoneRIP] Re: A Glossary Would Be Helpful

[rest of original comments edited to shorten thread. btw, if my comment comes
across as unkind or rude please pardon. it's not intended to come across this
way. besides, text communication is one lowest form of communication.]

i agree with robin. although it's true that other experienced QTR users did
begin without much resources, but in all fairness all the
frequently-asked-questions could've been spared from this forum had we have a
cohesive manual and a glossary. much of the information is availabe in the
manuals, but they're not presented cohesively. the user often have to connect
the dots to make some sense of what the programmer is describing in the manual. 

i've written small manuals for a small company, and it's not an easy task. it's
a challenge to take several sentences to describe a procedure and condense it
down to a few steps without loosing the user. it's very easy to assume that the
user understands your description and instructions because you already have in
your mind how the product works. this is always easily overlooked when creating
a manual for a product. if you've done technical writing for a product, i think
you can sympathize with Roy and other programmers. it's not just step one, step
two, and then step three. it's just as time consuming to design a program as it
is to write a good manual. it's like an art, and so is writing a good program
like QTR. with this said, i think a cohesive manual can become a reality when
it's given fresh eyes from a user's perspective. i think this is what it needs.

i'm a new user to QTR and i've toyed with the idea of writing a manual but
backed-out. 
there are many other details about QTR that i don't understand yet. for me to
try to write a manual may be counter productive because i may inadvertently
misuse terminologies or describe procedures that contradicts Roy's original
procedures. little details but important. 
so if anyone wants to improve on the manual, we'll have to put our heads
together and agree on the terminologies and procedures. this way we can avoid
any confusion which could trigger another mass of frequently-asked-questions
populating this forum.

i hope my comment made sense.

regards,
daniel