PDF vs HTML (a corollary)

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For those of you who believe that on-line docs can completely replace
printed books, here are some of the ways printed books are better than
on-line documents. Anyone who believes on-line docs are as good or better
than printed books is severely twisted:

1. You can still read them when the computer is down.

2. You can conduct, away from the computer, a training, planning or
problem-solving session in which all attendees have a copy of the book.

3. You can actually perform an action on the screen while you're reading the
step-by-step procedure for it from the book.

4. You can annotate the pages, and highlight what you consider to be key
information.

5. You can examine (at full size) two adjacent pages at once.

6. You can use two or more of your fingers as bookmarks at widely spaced
locations, and rapidly flip back and forth between those locations, allowing
up to 6 or even 8 pages to be examined almost simultaneously.

7. As users become familiar with a printed book's organization and content,
their ability to find the information they seek steadily improves, even if
the book is poorly organized.

8. More complex page layouts can be employed, utilizing a mixture of
landscape, portrait and foldout pages to optimize the presentation of
information.

9. Superior graphics, formatting,, and typography, all of which help readers
to rapidly find and absorb the information they're seeking.

10. Running headers and footers, bleed tabs, multi-level indexes, tables of
contents, lists of figures, and lists of tables are proven ways to help
readers find what they're looking for.

Admittedly, items 8, and 9 and 10 above can be replicated when on-line
documents are in PDF, but even then the identically formatted printed
version is much easier to read and use, particularly when many pages must be
perused.
     ====================
     | Nullius in Verba |
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Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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