Re: Future of FrameMaker: InDesign?

["Paul Kevin Schulte" <paul.k.schulte@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fellow Framers,

Heavily snipped:

On the other hand, as we move into an increasingly screen-based reading
environment, there is a lot of what a lot of what we do in the paper
environment we can afford to dispense with. And in saying this I think
it is worth mentioning that I actually have some significant experience
in the printing trades (a year of print shop in high school - where we
set type
character by character and laid out the page by hand). I love the smell
of printers ink and see a well laid out page to be a work of art. 
However, if my own way of working with commercial and professional
documentation is any way representative, I find a simple and uncluttered
screen format far far easier to apprehend than something that is trying
to look like paper. It also displays faster. As a reader, (even with a
21" screen) I find simple HTML to be far preferable to any .PDF file - I
am probably reading the 2nd or 3rd HTML screen before the .PDF has even
finished loading, and then the majority of .PDF documents I read are two
column or formatted in such a small type font or with such wide margins
that they can't be read when sized to fit the screen, etc., etc.. To
read the damn thing I probably have no choice but to actually print it,
which costs still more time and adds to the pile of paper that already
sits on my desk, and is lost the next time I need to refer to it. From
my point of view as a user of documentation, XML really doesn't need to
do any more than HTML already does. If my prognostication of the future
is right, Adobe has a lot more than its market for FM to worry about -
and if developed properly, FM would provide them the platform to
ensure they keep a big piece of the hugely expanding XML market.

End snipping

Bill makes many valid points. Designing for on-screen viewing is very
different from the page or paper-based system developed heretofore. But
not all documentation we do can be web-optimized to meet all users'
needs.

An example: I get to help produce a 500 page document, which could be
250 or 1,000 pages depending on all the design choices. (Printer and
page size really are inapplicable to this point.) You can break this
down into the corresponding number of HTML pages. But many users would
still print this, rather than navigate 500, or 250, or 1,000 HTML pages
just to use this document. Print is still going to be utilized in
situations like this. In fact, I prefer to kill that half-forest if I
need to use such a document (which means reading it for actual
comprehension and acting upon it's issues or tasks). I still find this
paradigm much easier to use. Give me an Index to find what I need when
I'm not quite sure of the item I'm searching for.

I've also seen studies for this "paperless office" age that remark upon
how now more paper is used to convey "electronic" information. Smart web
design doesn't change users or people's expectations -- we've had
several hundred years of being trained to use books with tables of
contents and indexes to do our searching. And comfort of the users with
a tome of paper still outweighs many users' comfort with completely
electronic storage.

Does this mean that "paperless" is a fallacy? Not really -- it just
means that considerably more thought must be put into the design
up-front of the information, as well as the large scale investments of
users required to affect this fundamental a paradigm shift in society.
(And if the power is lost, you can still pick up that forest-killing
tome and read it.)

Paul K. Schulte

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