Online or PDF?

Subject: Online or PDF?
From: geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:24:43 -0600

Jane Bergen wondered about whether to put the docs into
help or PDF format for <<a mega-reference for our scripting
language>>.

My first thought is "why not both"? Should be possible to
meet the needs of the "I want a printed copy" set and the
"I just wnat to look it up fast" set. With suitable
software or macros, you should be able to accomplish this
in Word or Frame without doubling your workload.

However, an additional thought occurs to me based on your
statement that <<Mostly, the users will want to find one
function, or perhaps occasionally they will want to browse
through the functions in one category.>> I assume you have
good audience analysis info to back this up? (Just
checking!) This raises a red flag for me: if I were in that
situation, I'd want to copy and paste the info. directly
into a script I was working on. This suggests strongly that
PDF alone may not work at all in this context, depending on
how you protect the file (e.g., read only).

--Geoff Hart @8^{)} geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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