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Re: On-Line Vs. Print, Single-Sourcing, and how to ignore the obvious
Subject:Re: On-Line Vs. Print, Single-Sourcing, and how to ignore the obvious From:Michele Marques <msmarques -at- rogers -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 04 Aug 2002 23:39:50 -0400
Rebecca Downey wrote:
>
> I would like to know *what* are the differences between On-Line and print
> documentation in your humble opinion.
Some people have answered that the main differences are formatting and
possibly a few differences of what to put on-live vs. print (e.g.
graphics), all of which can be handled when single-sourcing.
In some situations, I agree with this assessment, but for some software
applications I believe a completely different approach is appropriate
and single-sourcing is not appropriate. For example, I have provided
both the on-line and print manual for a web-based form-driven
application. This is not a large application, so users don't really want
a huge manual. For the printed manual, everything is task-based, with
only the key fields of the form described (namely the mandatory fields
and sometimes a few other tricky or commonly required fields). For the
on-line help, each topic describes a single-form or screen. For the
on-line help, I assume that someone is stuck on the current screen
(usually a form) and clicked on help to figure out what to do.
Note that this example does not mean that I am against single-sourcing.
It just means that I think that there are some situations where it is
not appropriate, and that on-line and print sometimes are best served by
different documents with little overlap.
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