Front Page for printable docs (Sum. & thanks) longish

[Joy Zigo <Joy -dot- Zigo -at- HARPERCOLLINS -dot- COM>]

     On 4/24/97, I posted some questions on this subject (quoted below).
     Belated but enthusiastic thanks to the people who replied! The
     information they sent is summarized at the end of this message.

     >I'm planning a short (6 to 8 page) Guide to an in-house
     >application. The document will be available to users in
     >hard copy and will also be available on the intranet for
     >users who want to print it out from there.
     >
     >That is, it will not be redesigned for online use, but
     >simply posted so as to be readable online and also usable
     >as a printed document. I've previously posted short
     >documents on the intranet by PDFing MSWord documents. But
     >with HTML, I see this as one long page that users can print
     >in one fell swoop.

     >Front Page has been chosen as the standard authoring tool
     >for the intranet. <snip>
     >- What experience do people have using Front Page with
     >documents that are intended to be printable?
     >- Is there a sensible way to make a TOC that would show
     >page numbers for the hard copy reader? (If anyone wants to
     >simply use it from the intranet, page numbers will not make
     >sense...)
     >- Is there any advantage (or disadvantage) to creating the
     >document in Word and then importing it to Front Page?
     >- Can Front Page do the .BMP to .GIF conversion of screen
     >shots? Would you do that in Paint Shop Pro instead?
     >
     ============================
     Summary of responses:

     * Designing the html page(s) as long "scrolls" does facilitate
     printing and makes sense. (The readability of long HTML pages is
     increased by including a "go to top" button after every page-full.)

     * Authoring in Word and then converting to HTML by opening the file in
     FP gives you a source document that's editable with a good tool for
     editing, Word. If your conversion to HTML is satisfactory and needs no
     touchup, this is a good solution. Any touchup in HTML can't be
     retained for future revisions, since you can't revert to Word from
     HTML.

     * Word 95 and FrontPage 97 are a good team for this purpose. In Word
     97, you can just save the Word file in HTML, within Word.

     * Comment on using FP for documents that are intended to be printable:
     "Acckkk!  Not good at all.  The documents need to be very basic.  Not
     a lot of formatting.  Make sure you use styles, and to help yourself
     out, name your styles Heading 1, 2, etc.  Bottom line, KISS theory
     rules."

     * While there are crude ways to put page numbers into html pages (for
     example, as <A NAME="" tags> with <BR>'s to control length of pages),
     these solutions are inelegant and may require users to have identical
     hardware. [I've decided to have users let Netscape or IE put its own
     page numbers into its own footers and live with them--JZ].

     * FrontPage will do the graphics conversion, and so will the Internet
     Assistant for Word.
     ============================
     Regards--Joy
     ..........................
     joy -dot- zigo -at- harpercollins -dot- com

     Speaking strictly for myself, not for HarperCollins

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