Well said!
On 28 Oct 2005, at 01:12, Timothy Miller wrote:
I have mixed feelings about what I'm about to say. I expect that
the new docs will be a big improvement. They might be excellent.
Rev deserves a lot of credit for efforts to enhance the docs. I
don't want to see that deprecated. I suspect Rev cares about their
users more than most technology companies I could name.
OTOH, in my opinion, it's time for the concept of "continuous
quality improvement" came to the world of technical documentation.
And, being a Rev loyalist, I'd love to see Rev do it first, maybe
with a Rev interface, if feasible.
(It would be totally cool if a commercial product, intended for
this purpose, could be built mostly with Rev. It would have to be
extensible and flexible. But this seems feasible -- not that I know
diddly squat about that sort of thing.)
With a wiki, continuous quality improvement could mean, "it gets a
little better every five seconds." (For that matter, the Wikipedia,
today, might get a little better every five *milliseconds*!)
Some published docs are better than others, but none get anywhere
near optimal. Technical documentation is inevitably obsolete the
day it is published. There's always room for updated information,
clearer explanations, different contexts, more examples, more "see
also" links, better search capacity, and so on. All those little
improvements really add up over time. In addition, hyperlink
technology (ahh... my old friend, HyperCard) can greatly enhance
convenience and real-world useability. Multiple forms of indexing,
for instance. Terse, less terse and verbose versions of the same
topic, for another. (The beginner will likely want the verbose
version. The experienced user will not want or need to wade through
it.) I've never seen hyperlink technology live up to its potential,
even though it's been in use for fifteen years or more. A docWiki
like the one proposed could be the first time. (Wikipedia is
already pretty good, I guess. I don't use it that much.)
I have some doubt about whether it would ever be profitable for a
private company to write docs like those that could arise
spontaneously from a wiki. Printed on paper, they might fill 10,000
pages, and would still lack the convenience of hyperlinks, search
capacity, and so on.
When docs arise spontaneously from a wiki, they will be much
cheaper to produce -- almost free, after the early drafts, except
for keeping out vandalism and ignorance. And users might also
police the vandalism and ignorance at no cost (possibly). For the
manufacturer, how good could it get?! Even if a company tried to
write optimal docs and practice continuous quality improvement in
the docs, users, given the opportunity, could always improve
whatever the engineering and technical writing staff came up with,
with no publication delay.
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