Re: Is PDF or HTML as easy as 123 or Pi?

Subject: Re: Is PDF or HTML as easy as 123 or Pi?
From: "Susan W. Gallagher" <susanwg -at- ix -dot- netcom -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:23:50 -0700


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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