> My experience with manuals is that the best ones serve both an > introductory role, yet also a quick-reference when all you really need > is a reminder about how something is done. There are a variety of ways > of accomplishing this, but one advantage of Andreas's suggested layout > with a wide lateral margin, is that the margin can be used for a > succinct summary of what's on the page, or hints, or any number of > easily understood clues.
Yes, that is the way to do. When I studied on technical college we had a class in technical writing (to learn how to write manuals, because it's the engineers who know how things work and they need to be able to teach others). And I think we were told that a good manual need to work in 3 different ways. 1. Quick start 2. Different "how to do that" 3. Reference (what is that button for? where is that function?) We got a very technical description of a fictive device and wrote manuals for it. /Peter
