On 13 Jun 2002, Red Drag Diva wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 23:52:05 -0700, > Steve Rudman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > : I'm glad you cited the Guide to Mozilla, which makes it very clear that > : the intended audience is developers. My reading of the text leads me to > : a different conclusion than you, apparently. I interpret "general public > : end-user support" as meaning help. At a recent WinWriter's Online Help > : conference, for instance, I think it was William Horton (or someone of > : his stature in the technical writing discipline) persuasively argued > : that Help is the user's "portal" into the full gamut of a company's > : (=distributor's) help offerings. > > > So the Help File should be regarded only as a marketing tool? Nooooooooooo....*sighing* A portal draws people in. It's part of the product. It's the first part of a much greater world that the user sees. This doesn't mean that you make the help vague and unhelpful so as to increase the number of support calls (if, for instance, your support is a pay-as-you-go service for the customer). It just means that the portal is part of a company's image and is a gateway to a wider world (in this case, of help). Now, do I think that we should rely upon distributors to write help that will be common for all distributions? No. I expect them to redistribute Moz with as little investment and customization as possible. That means that the help files will be *the last* thing that they touch, and even then, they will only touch the things specific to their distribution. That means most of the functionality should be covered by Mozilla help. So the distributors would make our help look different (purely cosmetic changes) while adding their own custom, distro-specific content and plugging their help services, some of which would be generic, most of which would be distro-specific. ~Mike
