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Re: Question: To allow printing or to not allow printing...
Subject:Re: Question: To allow printing or to not allow printing... From:Melissa Fisher <MFisher -at- AUTOMATEDLOGIC -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 30 Oct 1997 16:10:41 -0500
James Bauman wrote:
> Our department will be putting documents online (our users for years
> have
> consulted paper documentation), and we are concerned that most users
> will
> print most or all of the online documents. That would defeat one big
>
> benefit of having the documents online, of course.
Jim,
Are your users internal to your company? Is your concern that printed docs
may fall out of date as the online docs are updated? Our company faced a
similar issue when we began documenting for ISO 9000 registration. Our
solution was to keep everything online, with a notice at the top of each
document that all printed copies of this document are considered
uncontrolled.
ISO 9000 issues aside, I think this is probably the best you can hope to
accomplish -- if you prevent users from printing online docs, apart from
generating unnecessary ill-will, you will only convince die-hard paper
users not to read your documentation at all.
Melissa Fisher
mfisher -at- automatedlogic -dot- com
