I agree, DGA. There are two fundamental requirements of good documentation:

* The information must be usable (Written to the correct audience, understandable, and usable by all.)
* Retrievable (Can users find the information?)

Technical writing is probably the lowest priority in any company budget. It takes a lot of convincing to show management that their developers' time is better spent, well, "developing" not answering questions that a well written manual should address. I believe the philosophy is, "We have a computer and a word processor. We can write our own manuals." Nothing could be further from the truth. A computer and word processor are merely tools. If I own $50,000 in cabinet making tools, does it automatically mean can I build fine walnut furniture?

I'm drifting from the original topic, but there seems to be a legitimate concern about the documentation. I will finish by saying, when you let developers write the manuals, you have made a fundamental error--that is, the users' schemata (how they commonly process information) often doesn't match that of the developers'. To write programs and code takes an advanced and logical mind set. Most users do not come close to that type of schemata, hence, anything the developer documents is likely to be totally misunderstood. For the life of me, I can't find my way around LinkedIn and Facebook. My navigational schemata just won't permit it. What does this mean? The folks who built those sites think one way, and I think another. Are they wrong? No, just different. However, their developers have missed the mark. The younger generation usually have no issue with those two sites. I'm 63 years old, which means I was weaned with a slide rule, not a Pentium IV!

I'm not putting in a plug for my skills, however, if Peter is interested (and for the benefit of all) I would be more than happy to perform a usability analysis of the documentation, starting with the online PDF manual. Such a study involves a usability chart developed by my colleague at IBM. It provides a quantitative assessment of "how ready" the document is for release. It also points out specific areas that need to be fixed.

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