Re: Paper vs. PDF: A data point?

Subject: Re: Paper vs. PDF: A data point?
From: Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>
To: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 09:29:42 -0400



Hart, Geoff wrote:

Playing Devil's Advocate here, but I have to ask myself what "User" prefers.
"Company", in my experience, is pretty damned clueless about what "User"
wants and needs, and usually "prefers" online manuals because they're too
cheap to buy printed copies for everyone who needs one. That, in turn, is
because developers are too cheap to provide the manuals in the first place.

I'll bet you if you dig deeper that those who receive the PDFs actually
print them out--shifting costs to the end user and generating far more paper
and clutter than if they just bought the manuals in the first place. But
that's speculation based on my own experience, not hard data.


Point taken, Geoff. But, as with almost everything else that comes up on this list, It Depends. In this case, it depends on the circumstances, the geographic distribution of users, the infrequency with which manuals need to be accessed (the RFP also requires page-level context-sensitive help), and other factors. In any case, I thought it was a refreshing sentence to find in a spec.

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References:
Paper vs. PDF: A data point?: From: Hart, Geoff

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