RE: Distributing Word docs to customers

["Steve Cavanaugh" <scavanaugh -at- nat-seattle -dot- com>]

The main issue I've had with Word files as a distribution medium is that
the screen format is dependent on the printer driver installed on the
viewing PC.  So if your documents have tables of contents with page
numbers, they are going to be wrong if you deliver Word files.  If you
deliver PDF, the pagination is based on the machine that created the
PDF, and it is locked in.  We had problems with this submitting
documents to the FAA because they couldn't find things that were listed
in the TOC. Of course you can have much worse formatting problems
depending on the way the reading PC renders your document.


Steve Cavanaugh


-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+scavanaugh=nat-seattle -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+scavanaugh=nat-seattle -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com]
On Behalf Of Mary Arrotti
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 2:22 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Distributing Word docs to customers

We're currently debating pros & cons of how we distribute our documents
to our customers. I'm more comfortable with distributing all our docs
(other than Help) to customers in PDF format. This has been common
practise in my experience. A coworker prefers distibuting our docs in
Word format so our internal sales & support people can copy text from
the docs. (However, we wouldn't want our customers to do this.) While
the obvious solution might be to produce both formats - my coworker
feels this unnecessarily complicates our process. 
   
  I've provided some arguments concerning the benefits of PDF vs. Word
but would like some additional feedback. So, I'd appreciate any insight
or experiences you may have on this. Does anyone distribute their user
documentation as Word files (rather than PDF)? Has anyone had any issues
with this? Can anyone else see possible issues?
   
  Thanks

 	      
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