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Subject:Re: PDF's Last Gasp and Chaos From:BlaineBachman -at- bia -dot- gov To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 24 Jan 2000 08:36:27 -0700
I'm sure that there are better solutions than PDF files. I just want to
chime in on the side of PDFs in a practical sense (especially in a
corporate culture that loves paper).
In the past year, I worked for two companies who didn't see any problem
electronically submitting contract-specified documentation as MSWord files
to their customer/client. Pointing out to them that their "see page 64"
notations might not be of much use to the person on the other end (because
of differences in printer-dependent page formatting) and showing them how,
with the right tools, the customer might be able to see all the changes
that had occurred in the document (like when the manager says, "Copy that
proposal we made to Acme last year, raise the price 10%, and send it to
Dewey, Cheatham, & Howe.") made Acrobat an easy, inexpensive sell. (I'm
not foolish enough to believe I can change their whole outlook on
documentation - like, "You've got 50 engineers; for cryin' out loud, hire a
permanent tech writer or two and get some decent tools!)
-blaine (entertained by Andrew's chaos theory lectures - they seem to say
that "all generalizations are flawed." 'Course this suggests that his are
as well - grin)
