Hypertext for documentation
===========================

                   After the coming uses of hypertext in PR <link44> and
                   advertising <link35>, I believe the next major application
                   will be in documentation.

Documentation      For example, the budgeted cost for documentation
is 5% of budget    supporting a complex high-technology industrial machine
===============    might be 4-6% of the total development cost.  This figure
                   is similar to the 5% of the budget that the Department of
                   Defense reports for the documentation for their weapon
                   systems.  (And we know how realistic that is!)

Actual cost is     If you analyze the life cycle of a weapons system and the
10-100 times       use of the documentation by sales, maintenance, customer
higher             personnel (and the turnover in each area), the actual cost
======             of understanding and using most documentation often exceeds
                   the cost of the equipment itself.  Why?

Cost of bad        The real cost of transferring knowledge (i.e., training) is
documentation      directly influenced by the quality of the documentation.
=============      And if users can't easily find what they want, they
                   switch to more expensive forms of knowledge transfer --
                   instructors, seminars, courses, etc.

The cost of        A college education, for example, costs over 100 times
knowledge          that of the books that are required.  Competence with
=========          most software typically costs users many times the
                   purchase price.  In the military, training costs always
                   seem to exceed hardware costs.  What's the solution?

Benefits of        The fundamental benefit of hypertext is organizing
hypertext formats  information in formats that easily provide desired
=================  knowledge to users, reducing learning time and knowledge
                   acquisition.  If this is true, creating hypertext
                   formats for documentation is about to become a major new
                   industry.

 
==== <g HYPERTEXT>                  36 links in glossary topic
==== <g DOCUMENTATION>               2 links in glossary topic
