RE: Previous, Next and Print buttons in Help

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

 Paul Hanson asked:

> Are you talking about using a CSS file for "media=print" to 
> create the "formatted-for-nice-printing" version? Have any 
> CSS to share?

Nope.

I carefully leave that sorta stuff out of my WebHelp. 

Having anything of the sort just reminds/encourages requests 
for "a single printable version" of your Help. 

The one-and-only time I tried to oblige such requests, 
I got sucked into a morass of escalating requests to 
"fix it so it is formatted properly and organized properly"... 


Um, it's help. Each topic page is either a standalone entity 
or a member of a topical cluster of pages. A page might be a 
paragraph or it might be 31 paragraphs and a bunch of 
embedded diagrams.  Any given page might have multiple 
instances of drop-down or expanding text (or text-and-graphics). 
Any given sequence of instructions might:

a) proceed directly from step to step to the end

b) branch to alternate paths (of one or more steps) for 
variant product versions or customer implementations

c) keep to a single path but skip over some steps that 
describe optional config or features...

d) other.

Now, tell me how to make that generate a single PDF or 
Word document that flows properly and understandably... 
oh, and doesn't have a bunch of redundancy. 



With that said, I'm ready to make happen whatever they 
want to have happen if they are willing to throw money 
at us for the privilege.  On that point, I'm in violent 
agreement with the Product Manager who said exactly 
that when I said I'd need considerably more time on the 
project schedule if we really wanted to please certain 
parties.

 - Kevin 

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