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Assuming we are speaking of a writer's template, whether it is built
with your "bottom up" approach or a "top down" one makes little
difference...when the person constructing the template is experienced
in product specification writing.
Either way, adjustments and modifications may need to be made through
multiple generations of a new template.
The "top down" approach has its benefits, too. For one thing, it is
often much simpler to create a uniform design, styles based upon a
clean foundation. In many programs, the styles definitions can become
somewhat spaghetti-like without great care. Often, therefore, creating
a template from a very limited number of clean base styles makes
things much easier all along. Often, this can be done with two
fundamental styles--one serif and one sans. Afterwards, making
adjustments such as font changes becomes much easier.
The end result is often much easier to verify--no overlooked format
overrides, for instance.
If prior examples are used from their appearance and not from any
stylesheet settings, the result can also be a clean one. This kind of
visual example can give decent results if you don't have a writer with
long experience writing product specs.
David
On 5/21/05, Mike O. <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> I normally take exception to the "template first" approach. I prefer
> the "bottom up" approach. I'd say take your three most successful
> product specifications and, if everybody agrees they are good, use them
> to derive a template.
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