I was reminded of him today when I read an article in the New York Times about the new 2007 Mercedes Benz S-class. And I'm relating this on a blog about tech writing because the article in question actually mentions the 700-page (!) owners manual that comes with the car.
"In my case, this [problem] led to opening that telephone-book-size manual to try to understand the nature of an ABC Malfunction. (By the way, ABC stands for Active Body Control, a system that is supposed to adjust the suspension automatically for optimal handling.) While thumbing through the manual, I wondered why some clever engineer hadn't figured out a way to let the driver know what to do when the car is having an alphabet-related problem. Certainly a descriptive warning message would be more useful than the PCMCIA slot in the dashboard."
The writers who worked on that guide must be feeling especially pleased with themselves. Not only is the work in question being mentioned in the New York Times, but I also imagine (like the writer of semicolon) that working on a document like that must be a lot of fun. Certainly more so than many of the software manuals it has been my pleasure to wrestle with other the years.
¿Wath is the new Internet?
EEPEL = Enviroment Standard of Software On Line
This web site is a personalizable, nimbled and practical system which runs software On Line, Web's pages, FTP's, and everything related to the Internet.
This environment offers system files, which are available for software that runs in EEPEL.
http://www.eepel.com.ar
Posted by: EEPEL Enviroment Standard of Software On Line | June 13, 2006 8:35 AM | Permalink to Comment