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Subject:Printed Docs vs. PDF Files From:Carl Stieren <STIEREN -at- SIMWARE -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 16 Sep 1997 15:53:00 EDT
Hello Everyone,
I'm just back from a trip to Ireland and Scotland - it was wonderful. I saw
Brendan Behan's "The Hostage" in Galway, as well as Flan O'Brien's "The
Third Policeman", cycled on the isle of Inish Mor, climbed Ben Nevis at Fort
William, Scotland, and went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The best thing
about visiting old friends in other countries is that they make sure you
don't miss the good stuff. ("Oh, Carl, we knew you were coming, so we got
you a ticket to hear Doris Lessing tonight. She's speaking on her favorite
six works of fiction from that past 100 years.").
But in a bar in Dublin, I heard this sad tale from another tech writer. I
have her email address, so I can forward any of your solutions.
Her company moved from print documentation to PDF files (they were sold to
everyone as "printable documentation", from which the user could print out
individual pages or the entire manual if necessary.) Marketing was assured
that if they really needed printed and bound copies of the docs, they could
make them, no sweat, from the PostScript files produced from FrameMaker.
Then - horror of horrors - one of the products had incredibly high sales.
Marketing came and said, "We need printed manuals".
However, in the shift to FrameMaker and PDF, the FrameMaker templates had
been designed for 8.5 x 11 inch pages, and guess what - Marketing had 25,000
copies of the OLD printed covers, which were 7 x 9 inches! Marketing
couldn't afford either the time or the money to redo the covers, so they
wanted a conversion to 7 x 9 inch manuals.
Now, if this book were largely text and smaller graphics, there wouldn't be
any problem. But the software is for Unix and has a UI with small type on
menus, and it's 50-50 whether the screen shots will be legible at 7 x 9.
Also, this poor lassie designed synoptic pages for each major step of the
software (it's a complex package), so that she needs Step 1 (left page) with
graphic and summary across from Step 1 (right page) with screen shot and
procedure steps. If she shoots down hard copy to 81%, she loses legibility.
If she reformats, her synoptic 2-page modules disappear in a snaking trail
of two-and-a-half page units.
What advice should I give her?
- Carl Stieren
Technical Writer
Simware, Inc.
Ottawa, Canada
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