They do it here where I'm the one and only writer (a contractor). (The company designs and builds cement manufacturing plants for cement manufacturers worldwide.)
While the company's home office in Germany has a stable of good writers and illustrators, and produce manuals specific to the various components that comprise a cement manufacturing plant, my books done here in Atlanta for U.S. clients are called "operating descriptions" and are pretty much an overview of the various prestart conditions, starting procedures and shutdown procedures that must be in place for this or that part of the cement plant (the raw material transport area gets a book, as does the raw meal facility, as does the preheater & kiln area, as does the finishing mill, etc.) The books range in length from 40 or 50 pages to 120 or so pages and also include a series of tables at the back of the book with VERY detailed info on pressures, temps, electrical stuff, etc. (The client gets a humongous set of binders with the various machine manuals and vendor manuals as well as my operating descriptions.) I guess my books could be called "turn key manuals". And while the machine manuals from Germany are done very well with line art and all the rest in an attractive layout, my books are done in Word with NO graphics or safety warnings and that's all there is to it - by order of the manager of electrical engineering. I once did an alternate version of one book with a few line art graphics back last spring to show my boss the comparison, but he is totally NOT interested. He's an engineer and doesn't see the need for anything other than what they already had in place. Note that previous to my being here, the electrical engineers did the design work AND wrote the manuals. And that's the way it still is (because there's far more work than I can do by myself). And yes, the books done by the engineers are full of terrible grammar, typos, complicated and hard-to-understand explanations, etc. It just doesn't matter. And it will go back to that way completely upon my departure. Bottom line: do what Gary says: " . . . just dive right in and do the best job you can." -- Ken in Atlanta -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas Johnson Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 7:59 AM To: 'Gary Robinson'; [email protected] Subject: Re: [TCP] Graphicsless documentation Hi Gary, For the life of me, I can't see why anyone would want to do such a thing. I'd sure like to hear the rationale as well. Sometimes it isn't worth chewing through the straps. You've been around long enough to realize it's probably something someone read in a management magazine as a, hairbrained-as-it-may-be, way to save a few bucks. It'll probably come back to bite them in the end. My advice is to just dive right in and do the best job you can. Maybe someone will come to their senses and have you include graphics before it's too late. I think I'd be stashing away the screen shots as I went--just in case. It would be easy enough and true enough to say you're capturing them to use as reference. Have a merry Christmas everyone! Tom Johnson Technical Writer Microline Technology Corp. [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1 231 935 1585 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gary Robinson Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 10:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [TCP] Graphicsless documentation I am authoring online help and adjunct documentation for a client. In a meeting with the prime contractor today I was instructed that there should be no graphics in any of the documentation produced for the client. Their rationale (irrationale?) was that if the documentation ever needed updating it would be too much work to update the graphics. We are using a well known screen capture untility and a authoring tool that is built to reuse every element in the documentation with ease. I pointed out it may take only 2 minutes a graphic to update them if needed (these are mostly screen captures with no formatting other that resizing and a hairline border) but to no avail. I am allowed no contact with the client so I can't ask them their opinion on this directive. Has anyone else produced graphicless documentation? If so, what was the rationale? Inquiring minds, etc. Regards, Gary G. Robinson Technical Communications Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________ This e-mail message and any attachment contains private and confidential information and is intended for the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), please do not read, copy, use or disclose this communication to others. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by replying to this message, and then delete it from your system. Attachments: Please use our "Send us a file" link on http://www.PolysiusUSA.com. Thank you. ____________________ Polysius Corp. Atlanta, Ga. USA http://www.PolysiusUSA.com Voice: 770-850-2000 Main Fax: 770-955-8789 ______________________________________________ Author Help files and create printed documentation with Doc-To-Help. New release adds Team Authoring Support, enhanced Web-based help technology and PDF output. Learn more at www.doctohelp.com/tcp. Are you a Help Authoring Trainer or Consultant? Let clients find you at www.HAT.Matrix.com, the searchable HAT database based on Char James-Tanny's HAT Comparison Matrix. 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