This is a HUGE benefit to the PDF versions and the use of the PDF search
engine. Then all you have to do is figure out what you are lookig for is
called. hi hi
73, de Jim KG0KP
- Original Message -
From: Guy Olinger K2AV olin...@bellsouth.net
To: k6...@foothill.net
Cc: Elecraft Reflector elecraft@mailman.qth.net
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 How do I uncouple VFO's?
On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Fred Jensen k6...@foothill.net wrote:
I wonder if the complexity of the K3 has surpassed human ability to
adequately describe it in written language? :-)
This is hardly a K3 only issue. Superb technical writing is in
extreme frustrated demand everywhere in the entire general
electronics/computer/software industry. The complaints are the same.
At the center the root user complaint:
I only want to do one little thing and I can't find it in the
centimeter thick manual.
Frustrated reflector users reply with RTFM to the thousandth iteration
of the same question. On the other side is the newbie who is measured
in studies as having no chance whatsoever of reading the centimeter
thick manual like a book and retaining anything other than a tiny
slice of the total content.
Read a step and do a step manuals work well. But they require
complete reading and adherence from start to finish.
Heathkit instruction manuals and Bell System Practices are two iconic
examples of the best of this genre, but neither could be read like a
book for retention BSP's were a massive library organized by equipment
and task that would take a lifetime to read through once. It was
possible (and required) for the reader to be able to complete the
described task 100% accurately at a competent commercial speed without
ever understanding the workings behind the task. Indeed if retention
was the goal, it failed miserably, because even those of us with years
of experience on a given task would never do a BSP spec'd adjustment
without the particular BSP open in front of us, no more than a 40 year
old veteran pilot would start up or shut down a plane without the
checklist for his equipment.
Carefully staged scientific studies on retention of information from
reading of flat paper manuals have only given terribly discouraging
results. In many technical support centers, really good techies are
stretched to breaking by customers who only get through a task by an
exercise the techies refer to as reading the manual to them.
The K3 itself stepped into dangers documentation areas the minute they
tried something that did not have a precise analogue in the world of
analog radios. That meant there were concepts and behaviors in the
radio which had no precedent in earlier radios and were impossible
(yes, impossible) to duplicate in an analog radio.
That took away one of a writer's best tools, relating something new as
an elaboration or extension of something old and understood.
IMHO, drill-down tools have the best chance of moving beyond read
and do manuals, implementable only in electronic devices. But these
are constrained by the absolute need to provide common word glossaries
to key search terms. Too often the user is defeated by not knowing the
single secret word (out of dozens of synonyms and phrase
approximations that will index the required knowledge. This was the
number one issue with the monumental IBM knowledge base, with nothing
in second, third, or fourth place.
Usually creating the glossary/term/phrase index for a drill down
manual requires continuous and ongoing work that carefully collects
can't find data from tech support activity and updates the indexing
system. This usually requires expenditure of a full-time employee even
in a smaller company, which adds to expense, and is tempting to forgo.
As a society we hit this problem in the 1930's and it only gets worse.
73, Guy.
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