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Kirk Turner wondered: <<I am editing a state manual, and until today,
my understanding was that there would be one version of the manual
online and another version in a published volume. Now, I understand
that there will a single manual in an online PDF that, of course, can
be printed out.>>
Generally a really bad choice, and it's worth arguing about this with
the client. PDF is not inherently unusable online, but it's more
difficult to integrate with software to create context-sensitive help,
and portrait-format manuals that print well are (in my opinion)
completely unusable online. If you're distributing a PDF designed for
print in the hope it can also be used online, you might just as well
say you're not providing online help and be done with it. At least
design it in landscape format so it can be printed that way too, while
remaining readable onscreen.
<<I had specified different fonts for online and print, but now I need
a font that will suit both media. Is there a scheme (headings and body
text) that is the standard for such a scenario?>>
You're starting from a false assumption here. With relatively little
design work up-front, you can create a template optimized for print use
and another one optimized for online use (including landscape
orientation). Write the manual in a single file, optimized for print
(i.e., using the print template), then when it's time to publish, open
that file, apply the online template, do a "save as", then generate the
online version of the PDF. Think of this as "single sourcing". <g>
Depending on the nature of the manual, you may need to whip through it
and fix a few bad page breaks, but you can minimize this with careful
design of the style definitions.
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