Re. How to highlight field names

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

     A few folks have proposed solutions for highlighting field, file,
     window etc. names in printed documentation. For what it's worth, the
     traditional approach works best for me:

     Use a visibly different font for field names. The usual suspect is
     Courier, but any legible but different font will do. Ideally, use the
     same font that you're using on-screen so that the reader can recognize
     the text more easily upon glancing at the screen. Similarly, match the
     capitalisation to how the text appears on screen. Thus, "COURIER CAPS"
     for much DOS text generated by MS DOS (or variable capitalization if
     the programmer chose how the word appears), "Geneva Roman" for most
     Mac stuff, and "Whatever That Font is That Windows Uses" for Windows
     stuff. The goal is to match the appearance of your actual application,
     not to be rigidly consistent; the examples I gave are typical, but by
     no means universal for those three operating systems.

     This approach strikes a really nice balance between enough visual
     differentiation to indicate the function of the words, and not so much
     visdiff (!) to make the page look like a ransom note cut out of a
     newsletter.

     --Geoff Hart    @8^{)}
     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

     Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of
     our reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.