H4y^3,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The example of the Turbo Tarburner was chosen with care. Even as we
bicker, a major automotive manufacturer is implementing an on-demand
customised workshop manual.
The mechanic will simply enter the car's body number or VIN or
whatever, and a custom manual for just the equipment in that build
will be created on the fly and presented on screen.
It makes perfect sense - the information about what the car is equipped
with has to be pretty easy to obtain. Even things like the service
history of a vehicle should be stored electronically in one of its
numerous computers. Writing it in a book that sits in the glove box for
the life of the car is pretty silly.
The mechanic will be able to use a TOC, Index, or boolean search
engine to find the instructions they need. The index is there for
people who, unlike us, do NOT work in the IT industry and have a more
sophisticated approach to information retrieval. But EVERYBODY knows
how to use a back-of-the-book index -- even if it is on-line!
Maybe, though I usually think of an index as being a collection of
shortcuts necessary because the information is difficult to find by
other means. Of course it is difficult to find things in hardcopy, but
in an electronic product I might question whether the user interface is
as good as it could be. For our mechanically gifted friend, I'd be
inclined to provide a graphic interface and a touch screen that let him
drill to the warp drive than compel him to hunt and peck on a toughened
keyboard. An index may have its place, but it's a much smaller home than
where it used to live.
And they will probably print out just the pages they need to fix the
warp drive.
Perhaps they could load the printer with gasket paper - at least that
way they'd be able to recycle effectively...
Have a good weekend, Hedley!
Marcus
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