Re: OT: official Note, Caution, Warning text for software, data, electronicdevices?

[Larry Kollar <Larry.Kollar@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Regulatory wants us to use ANSI-standardized text for the 
> explanations of what Note, Caution, and Warning imply.

This is what we've used in telephony-oriented documentation, but
it should apply to other fields as well. If there's anything
official, this should at least be close. It's off the top of my
head, and I think we wobbled a bit in actual use.

DANGER
        Risk of death or personal injury (black triangle icon)
        Shock hazard (lightning icon)

Warning (black triangle icon)
        Risk of equipment damage
        Heavy lifting advisory (use two people or a forklift)
        (rare) Risk of extended service interruption of >128 lines

Caution (white triangle icon except where noted)
        Risk of service interruption
        Risk of data loss or other recoverable problems
        Electrostatic sensitive device advisory (static icon)

Note
        Additional information
        Non-service interrupting advisories

Technically, the static-sensitive advisory should be a Warning
instead of a Caution, as it involves equipment damage, but there
may be tradition or other factors involved.

> The problem 
> is, we're shipping software -- so the equipment-centric definitions 
> of these don't really apply.

Yeah, unless your software can smoke the monitor (this was actually
a problem with some older PCs), or could wipe a hard drive clean (I
would classify that as equipment damage, personally, since that's
worse than a smoking motherboard), you'll only use Caution and Note.

--
Larry Kollar, Senior Technical Writer, ARRIS
"Content creators are the engine that drives
value in the information life cycle."
    -- Barry Schaeffer, on XML-Doc


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