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Eric J. Ray wrote :
> I've been doing some research into using procedural steps, as in:
> etc.
From the different replies on this topic, I see two "schools" to obtain a
visual separation between action and result :
- One suggests typographical attributes (typically indenting and italicizing
the result)
- The other one suggests using a table with the action in a column and the
result in another one.
My feeling is that the latter is the most efficient :
- Only one font is needed, reducing the total number of fonts used in the
doc.
- The visual separation between action and result is much clearer, while at
the same time the link between both is made stronger by the border lines.
- Column headers *explicitly* tell that they are an action and a result,
while typographical attributes are implicit (and their meaning may vary
according to different readers)
- An experienced user can easily scroll only the left column.
- You can add extra column(s) for additional information, which would be
quite confusing in the first alternative since you would have to define
other typographical attributes.
- If results are shown as screenshots, graphics are not intertwined with
text.
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Frederic Wronecki
France Telecom, Paris, France
mailto : frederic -dot- wronecki -at- francetelecom -dot- fr
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