Hypertext for documentation =========================== After the coming uses of hypertext in PR and advertising , 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. References: ----------------------------------------------- Knowledge, the cost of creation Knowledge, the cost of transfer