Re: Is PDF or HTML as easy as 123 or Pi?
Has any ever developed a manual using HTML ... burned onto a disk and sent
directly to the client? Is there any advantage to this format (as, say,
over PDF)? ...
Sure, I did it for years for a former employer. I was
writing to developers in a cross-platform environment
(mid-1996). At first, I published the books on paper
and generated WinHelp for online; but...
It isn't really straight-forward to port WinHelp to
UNIX, and the developers weren't comfortable with the
format. And we were only selling about six copies of
any one piece of software at about $six figures a box,
so it wasn't cost-effective to go to print. (I didn't
do the economic analysis here, okay???) ;-)
So I investigated PDF and it didn't support all of the
UNIX platforms I needed. Now there's a Java version, so
that's not an issue.
And I did a survey of our less-than-expansive client
base and all of my geeky developers sitting home on
their Linux machines with their text-based browsers
wanted HTML. So for about three years, I sent everything
out the door in HTML 3.2 burned into a CD with the
product. For the volume and the product and the audience
and the time, it worked. There were a few complaints that
it was difficult to print, but not many.
Today it's just as easy to generate a PDF as well, so I'd
provide both; PDF optimized for print and HTML optimized
for online browsing.
-Sue Gallagher
susanwg -at- ix -dot- netcom -dot- com
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