Gary:
Here's another two more cents to add support to your comments about
printed manuals from a user fairly new to ebase but a longtime computer
user. The index is the key to using any reference and your other comments
echo my thoughts and experiences.
Gary Freeman
Missouri Prairie Foundation
At 09:11 AM 3/7/01 -0500, you wrote:
>While I think that online documentation is a great idea, I urge you not to
>abandon the printed manuals.
>
>I am personally much more comfortable with manuals than with online
>documentation, for reasons of convenience and eyestrain. With many of our
>old, slow computers, I must spend several minutes going to online docs,
>often frustrated by long waits for pages to load or occasional
>disconnections. I can pick up my manuals and find what I need in seconds.
>Low-tech is not inherently inferior. Also, I already stare at a screen far
>too much during the day, even using a fast computer. Looking up information
>in a paper manual is a break from that incessant eyestrain.
>
>That's how it is for me, and I'm a FileMaker developer. Most of my users are
>over 30. Many are *way* over 30 and not too comfortable with computers. Only
>a few are really computer-savvy. Just convincing the others to use ebase is
>a task. Asking them additionally to go online would be counter- productive,
>to put it mildly. Every question would come to me and my time would be spent
>explaining simple things over and over. There is certainly a place for
>printed manuals and will remain so for at least another generation. Users
>who want to be told everything are no more likely to look things up online
>than they are to pick up the manual.
>
>My only criticism with the current ebase books is indexing. A reference is
>only as good as its index. Starting with a full read-through is a good idea
>and helps us get launched. But nobody wants to read it twice, searching for
>something they missed the first time through. Most answers to most questions
>are in the ebase manuals, if we can just figure out what page they're on.
>The manuals would be dramatically improved by a much more comprehensive
>index.
>
>There has been mention of a documentation database. I like that idea in
>theory, but most database docs that I've seen were confusing and not very
>easy to use. I think that's a great concept in that it allows the use of a
>search engine for retreival. It also can be updated, which is a valuable
>attribute. But the user interface must be well conceived for it to be
>useful.
>
>My $0.02.
>
>Gary Bogue
>Landmark Society of Western New York
>
>
>> Subject: Delivering documentation
>> From: "Walt Daniels" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 13:25:28 -0500
>> X-Message-Number: 7
>>
>> There are two major forms of documentation, online help text and printed
>> manuals. There are strong proponents of both. However if you look at the
>> questions asked on this list it is completely obvious that almost no one
>> reads the printed manuals. Their questions are easily answered by a very
>> quick look at the manual. It is certainly the case that on average most
>> major program producers have been moving more toward online documentation,
>> quite possibly because it is cheaper rather than better.
>>
>> Ebase is somewhat different than most programs in that what is important
>> to
>> the users is how their organization uses the various facilities provided
>> by
>> ebase. A good example of this is matching contributions, which crops up
>> all
>> the time on this list. There are multiple ways of doing it but each
>> organization will pick only one of those ways. So we have to ask the
>> question of whether ebase should provide a manual for the IT person
>> implementing ebase at their organization or if it should provide a
>> framework
>> for organizations to document how they use the facilities. For some small
>> organizations, there is only the one IT person who does it all. For most
>> others there are many staff/volunteers who do the bulk of the work.
>>
>> With that as a background, let me tell a little about what we do. I am the
>> IT person but there are 4 staff and about 10-15 part time volunteers who
>> do
>> the real work. I have a startup page in front of ebase.102 that provides
>> the
>> user interface to not only ebase but also several other FileMaker
>> databases,
>> but more important in this case it also provides a database that is help
>> text that explains how to do each of the things we normally do (still very
>> much a work in process). The FileMaker find command provides an easy way
>> to
>> locate help for specific problems and the ebase users are already familiar
>> with to use it.
>>
>> I would strongly recommend doing online documentation rather than a
>> printed
>> manual which need only cover how to get ebase installed. Further I would
>> suggest documenting multiple ways of doing things where appropriate and
>> flagging them such that the local IT person can select the way they want
>> to
>> do it and suppress the other ways. Some of the pages should be fill in the
>> blanks type where each site customizes those pages to suit their way of
>> doing business, but they need the skeletal outline to get a jump start.
>> Furthermore that needs to be a whole section on database management
>> issues,
>> e.g. backups, validation, training, etc.
>>
>> The FAQ (or actually a very updated FAQ) should also be distributed as
>> help
>> text as should a digested version of this mailing list.
>>
>> Yes, I understand that the program described above is way over your budget
>> and personell availability. Structuring it as a FileMaker help database
>> should allow the many users to contribute bits and pieces with the
>> techrocks
>> staff providing a grand scheme, a correctness check, and integration.
>>
>>
>
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