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Re: Is Word Formatting in End-User docs important? [was:Word Help (problem solved)]
Subject:Re: Is Word Formatting in End-User docs important? [was:Word Help (problem solved)] From:Susan Guttman <sguttman -at- semantix -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:08:17 -0500
To add to this: I worked at a place that did translation of technical
manuals, including the re-creation of the manual in the second language. I
saw many document-format horrors there, things which the original doc
creator probably got away with because "it looks fine in print", but which
were hell on earth to deal with when you had to replace the text.
The worst case I can remember was in a manual by a well-known printer
company that does a lot of business in South America.
At least 30% of this particular printer manual was composed of tables. Not a
big deal, even though Latin languages tend to be rather longer than the
original English.... until I actually started trying to work in the tables.
Whoever made the manual had set up the text with tab stops, meaning first
line of text, tab, first line of text in adjacent cell, tab, etc, followed
by a hard return and then the same again: second line of text, tab, etc. And
then they'd used a graphic tool to draw lines around these boxes of text.
I wasted a week on that mess, when, if it had been properly formatted, it
could have been done before lunch. And my company had a very high per-hour
rate... the initial sloppiness cost that company at least an extra thousand
dollars in translation fees.
Susan
on 11/29/00 10:55 AM, Sharon Burton-Hardin at sharonburton -at- earthlink -dot- net
wrote:
> Time is money when you are an outsourcing company. If it takes you 1.5 as
> long to add text to the doc because the doc is badly managed, I and the
> client don't like that. That is my point. The result may look fine when we
> PDF, but it is an expensive document to do anything to. It doesn't matter if
> the client sees the source docs or not.
>
> sharon
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