A few more thoughts if I may about ‘how-to’ information in Legacy.
First, how many are aware of the tutorial topics available in Legacy’s help system? To find the list of tutorial topics, do the following: 1. Click the Help icon in the toolbar. 2. From the Legacy Help Contents page, click Tutorial Lessons. 3. Select from the list on the Examples and Demos topic. One writer suggested multiple versions of the same help file, for example, novice, intermediate, and advanced. Please understand that a user is not all novice, or all advanced in their use or understanding of legacy. You might rarely use one feature of Legacy, being a novice with that feature, while an expert with another feature you constantly use. There are methods of writing multiple levels of instruction into one help topic by “hiding” detailed explanations within the procedure. Those ‘hidden’ sections can be displayed to provide greater details. However, the structure of a typical Legacy help topic suggests that the Legacy staff does not include an experienced technical writer. Again, Legacy’s staff is just too small. A check of the About information on the help file shows the help authoring tool being used is Microsoft’s HTML Control Version 6.1 (a basic help authoring system) and (of course) the standard help compiler from Microsoft. Please remember too that a help system is linked by topic flow, not sequential information flow as with a book. Creating a help system is far more complex than writing a book, since with a help system you can link any topic (page) to any other topic. That linkage is something that cannot be duplicated with a book. Best, Denise L. Moss-Fritch Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
