Strategy for Handling Conditional Text

[Bill Swallow]

> That means think a lot about what you write. With one client we took the approach of a Mac and a PC version of manuals, but we had,
> say, 10 chapters that had the same info. We avoided product names. We asked the developers to match the product and dialogs. Then we
> wrote generic. Instead of "on the PC, click FOO to open the Windows Explore" and "on the Mac, click YADDA to open the Finder" or
> whatever, we wrote "Open your file browser", and similar things. The assumption was that the user would either know how to do it,
> look it up in the chapter on Mac Specific Functions and Tips, or ask a person "how do I do *this*".

Generally I agree, but I think in this specific case the application
that Joe is documenting really varies between Linux and Windows. At
least, that's what I gathered from: "Originally, I was told that these
differences would eventually go away and that the user experience
would be identical on both operating systems. This hasn't happened.
The differences have grown."

In this case, I think it's best to *advocate* for the generic approach
but until it's achieved on the application side conditions are likely
the best solution. As the applications become more similar, the
conditioned document can be generalized and conditions removed for
those general portions.

-- 
Bill Swallow

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