The document portfolio we built in the previous section provides a structure at the document level, but does not provide a way to group and organize it to build the documentation the readers will have. This is what Andreas Rüping calls a document landscape, referring to the mental map the readers use when they browse the documentation. He came up with the conclusion that the best way to organize documents is to build a logical tree.
In other words, the different kinds of documents composing the portfolio need to find a place to live within a tree of directories. This place must be obvious to the writers when they create the document and to the readers when they are looking for it.
A great helper in browsing documentation is the index pages at each level that can drive writers and readers.
Building a document landscape is done in the following two steps:
- Building a tree for the producers (the writers)
- Building a tree for the consumers (the readers), on top of the producers' tree
This distinction between producers and consumers is important since they access the documents in different places and different formats.