Design of online documents?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Heidi, a frustrated soul, wondered: <<When a document is delivered in 
.pdf format on a CD to the end-user, should the template be designed 
for online viewing or print?>>

Yes, and yes. <g> You can only get to the real answer if you ask the 
following questions: What do the users intend to do with the PDF: print 
it, or read it onscreeen? Notwithstanding what the users _intend_ to do 
with the PDF, what will they _actually_ end up doing with it? What goal 
is the PDF intended to serve: to save us from printing a manual, or to 
provide something that's usable online? Answer those questions and you 
have your answer.

<<Currently, all but one of our document types are delivered in .pdf 
format on a CD. Contrary to what I've been taught over the years, I'm 
being told that documents delivered in .pdf format need to be designed 
primarily for the printout the end-user will ultimately print. My 
experience in this field has taught me that online documents need to be 
treated as an online document, with the use of color, links, et 
cetera.>>

Sometimes you can do both. If you design the PDFs to fit a standard 
letter-sized page in _landscape_ format, with ample margins and large 
type, it will work tolerably well on the screen, yet can still be 
printed. Will it work _really well_ for either use? Not without heroic 
design effort. But this approach sometimes offers an acceptable 
compromise when the answer to your question is "some will print, some 
will read online" and you don't have time or resources to produce a 
great document in two different formats.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)