MINIMALIST COMPUTER DOCUMENTATION - Universiteit Twente

THE MINIMAL MANUAL: IS LESS REALLY MORE?
Rearranging a block of text
You can rearrange a document by moving, copying or
deleting text. To rearrange, you must always make a
block of the text first.
1 Position the cursor at the beginning of the sentence
"Because there is..."
2 Go to the menubar, select the option EDIT and
choose the command BLOCK
3 Press the ENTER key.
The prompt Block on appears on the screen. Check if
this is the case.
4 Press the ( key until the cursor is at the end of the
sentence.
If you cannot block the sentence as a whole, the cursor
was not positioned at the start of the sentence when you
chose the BLOCK command. Press the F1 key to undo the
block function and start again.
You have now made a block of the sentence
Figure 2.2
Illustration of the information-types in a minimal manual. The right-hand column
describes the various information-types. The left-hand column illustrates their
sequencing and presentation in the manual.
but skip and skim through it in order to attain personal goals (e.g., Penrose &
Seiford, 1988; Rettig, 1991; Scharer, 1983). To meet with this strategy, the
chapters in a minimal manual are self-contained. Each chapter starts afresh
with retrieving or creating a document and ends with saving the revised
document. Explicit cross-references between chapters are not included. In
addition, all chapters start from the basic text of a document; possible changes
to a document are never elaborated on in subsequent chapters. Users who wish
to attend to parts of the manual at will can do so.
There is, however, no complete modularity in a minimal manual. The first
chapter usually deals with starting the program and is therefore prerequisite to
the rest. But, by and large, the chapters in a minimal manual can be studied
independently. This is not to say that they must be studied randomly.
Following the users' suggestions to improve the GE-cards, the minimal manual
is flexible for study. Users are given the opportunity to study the program in
random order. However, when they do follow the sequencing of the manual,
their training progresses in a simple-to-complex manner (see design principle
1.1).
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