If all else fails, read the manual. We all think that the manual should be there, even if we don’t really want to read it.  What’s more, if the manual doesn’t have one particular piece of information that we need, or we can’t find it, it’s completely useless, even if there are hundreds of pages and even if the information is in there somewhere!

Unfortunately the manual, or the documentation as we normally call it in the software world, doesn’t write itself.

So who does?

I’m Tim Williams and I’m blogging from the Technical Communications Team. We’re the guys responsible for delivering Symbian documentation: The online reference libraries and the documentation in SDKs, the Developer Wiki, new Symbian books, example code and various ad-hoc paper and electronic publications.

Do we write it all? Absolutely not.  Just like the Symbian source code most of it existed long before the Foundation, and new content is contributed on a daily basis by foundation and community members.

Our role is to make sure that it’s not completely useless; to make sure that, when you need it, what you need is there.  And that you can find it.

To make that happen we really need those who know the subject to write down what they know.  And those who find out something useful to write down what they find out.  As well as making information easy to find we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone in the community who’s doing new Symbian stuff to share what they’re doing with the rest of us.

If you’re doing things with Symbian, finding out about Symbian, want to read about Symbian or want to tell people about Symbian, and you’re going to SEE 2009, we’d like to meet you.

We’ve got two sessions at SEE: a Birds of a Feather session at 3pm on Tuesday to talk about the documentation that we have and how we can make it better, and a ‘hands on’ session on Wednesday, also at 3pm, to show you how easy (and I mean easy)  it is for you to contribute to Symbian documentation.

Tim Williams

Technical Editor for Online Content.