[MeeGo-dev] On device help framework

[Graham Cobb]

On Tuesday 30 March 2010 06:47:37 tero.kojo at nokia.com wrote:
> There are pretty strict legal regulations, depending on sales location, on
> what kind of documentation has to be available to the person purchasing a
> mobile phone. The legal requirements for netbooks are different, as are for
> in-vehicle systems. So this will require a bit of differentiation depending
> on system type.

Making it easy for the community to submit changes, fix bugs, improve (or 
create) translations and rewrite parts of the documentation is not 
incompatible with legal restrictions, just as it is not incompatible with 
translation, good editing and, even branding policing.

The critical thing is to make it easy for (i) the community to submit 
improvements, and (ii) users to have speedy access to those improvements.  
There is no reason why those changes should not ubsequently be carefully 
reviewed, edited and, possibly, even rejected as part of a release process.

This is the big advantage of a Wiki-based approach.  The commmunity can make 
changes and those improvements can be immediately available to users in the 
Wiki (which can include a legal disclaimer).  The techical author/editor can 
review the changes and fix any problems before taking the material and using 
it to create formal documentation.  Reviews by legal, marketing and other 
interested parties can still occur before the formal documentation is 
released.

However, the key thing is that for the process to be effective, the version 
the community is working with, and the formal released version, have to be 
kept in sync.  As legal (and other) reviews happen, the changes have to be 
fed back into the version the community uses and is fixing.

Unfortunately, the tools generally used by technical writers, in my 
experience, are not designed for that sort of co-operative development (and, 
also, often have high barriers to entry such as training or, worse, 
commercial licences).

Graham