Re: Single sided vs double sided manuals

[Bill Briggs <web@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 4:36 AM -0600 22/10/98, Janet Lohmeyer wrote:

>He cites improvement in speed of printing largely stemming from the lack of
>need for manual duplexing of the print job (we are operating on a small
>budget and can't justify the cost of an auto-duplexer). Also advantageous is
>the ease of insertion of update pages.

That sounds like a bogus reason to me because all but the most trivial of
updates will reflow the document and require the rest of a chapter to be
printed, which is what would need to be done on a two sided document as
well.


>He further cites the higher-ups'
>preference for 'fatter' manuals, and of course, doing this would immediately
>double the # of pages, by adding 50% wasted space.

Geez, Dilbert really is a documentary.  If I can take the liberty to
translate, your management wants to deceive their customers into thinking
that they are really getting something that they're not - a "big" (in the
sense of content) manual.  And in the course of the deception they wish to
slaughter double the number of trees.  And people wonder why I'm cynical.
I guess if their ethics are in the gutter, then you don't have a prayer of
convincing them of the error of their ways.  You're looking for a rational
argument, but you've already indicated that management is of the kind that
is impervious to such an approach.  They seem to have their own motives,
which appear to be dishonest.


>You've helped tremendously in the past, and I need the ammunition now to
>help my company make the best long-term decision. I have never _ever_ seen a
>single sided user manual...

Neither have I.  And if I saw one I would think that the management of the
company was daft.  It would look very cheap and amateurish, and would take
up more space than necessary on my bookshelf, but if this is the image that
the managers want to project, then there's not much you can do.  Since they
don't care about their image and they only want to print one side, they
could bring in all of the letters they get in the form of junk mail and
print the manual on the blank versos.  This way they get to be
environmentalists at the same time as they're being daft.

- web



** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **