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> The archives are full of discussions about perfect-bound manuals
> vs. 3-ring binders. I strongly suggest you go look through
> them. Among the things you'll find are some financial analyses about
> the costs to assemble and distribute, and a lot of anecdotal
> evidence about people's experiences with both kinds.
Sounds like good advice.
> publishers discovered that ordinary readers REALLY DON'T LIKE 3-ring
> binders, and they REALLY DON'T LIKE books that are bigger than the
> 7" x 9" size.
Makes sense to me. And, as a voracious user of technical books,
may I chime in that you should make sure that the cover is somewhat
stiff and that the paper is not so tissue-thin that it shreds easily
and the book flops around. That's one form factor reason why the old
O'Reilly Associates books were my favorites. A good example of How
Not To Do It would be Bruce Eckel's otherwise-wonderful _Thinking In
Java_.
We print out a lot of very large technical docs at the office (an
excellent example would be this nift TCP/IP overview document from
IBM's redbook series; 738 pages, but well worth it! http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/pubs/pdfs/redbooks/gg243376.pdf ). These
docs get quite large and the binder clip thing is getting old. I've
been thinking about getting the boss to buy a comb-binder or something
similar. One website (swplastic.com) had several options - coil
binding, thermal binding, etc. I'd prefer to avoid 3-ring binders or
even comb-binding, if I had another option. Anybody have suggestions
for a good price/performance tradeoff for in-office use?
Steven J. Owens
puff -at- guild -dot- net
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