Frank, when you have time, please elaborate a bit for everyone about the
conditions / situation ("case"), and reasons, you "still think that in this
case, PDF is the way to go", specifically, the source (online) system and the
benefits gained from the extra work of maintaining PDFs (perhaps one, but
probably several). After all, by definition the PDFs would simply be duplicates
of the source info, requiring re-generation every time a source page is changed
in order to stay current, and adding nothing but restrictions, in the proposed
world where there is always a way to view/download/print the entire "manual"
(collection of pages) directly from the current source.
Jim
*--------------------
Frank wrote:
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6:06:03 PM 6/19/2007 >>>
Jim Harris wrote:
> In "... many users still value a [book-type] manual that they can download,
> print out and read offline. So there is still the need for creating PDF
> files", I agree with the goals and premise, but not the conclusion.
>
> This is one of my "pet peeves" about most help-style documentation: When the
> user wants to know how to use the product, and after looking through all
> pages found via various search efforts, still has not found what was sought,
> he/she wants to answer the question, "Have you read the manual?", either for
> themselves or for someone else who is trying to help them. With help-style
> documentation this can be impossible. Therefore, we users who want to "read
> the manual" need some way of assuring ourselves that we have read (or
> printed) the entire manual, preferably in some orderly way, e.g. at least
> pages are grouped by topic. However, a PDF is not the only way to achieve
> this goal. Any feature that allows a user to "walk" a documentation tree,
I agree, absolutely. But this is also about online vs offline documentation.
Some users will still want something offline that can be read while they're
not online, e.g. on their commute or during boring lectures ;-)
I still think that in this case, PDF is the way to go.
> e.g. "always turn left" or "do this element and all its descendants",
> preferably marking where he/she has been, will achieve that goal. If you
> avoid numbering pages consecutively thru the entire "book" but instead number
> the pages within small blocks/subjects, e.g. III-B-1, III-B-2, etc., or
> Printing-Pagination-1, Printing-Pagination-2, etc. you never have problems
> with page numbers.
If you do it online you wouldn't need page numbers. You could use a
TOC that describes the contents and the sequence of the pages of a "book"
and that can be used by the reader to work through the "book".
> And if, (wonderful world), in combination with the ability to mark on-line
> (e.g. wiki) pages read, a user could "subscribe" to the on-line manual, so
> that any user-submitted or steward-approved changed pages / sections
> (subscriber's choice) would result in automatic notification about those
> pages / sections, well then, I say we could hold up not only our nifty
> product but also our nifty documentation service as a model for the world.
>
> Just an idea ... I wonder if free software to support all this already
> exists, e.g. a wiki with steward approval of submitted changes and something
> like RSS subscription? (Sorry, I don't know about walking the doc structure
> or marking pages read.)
I know that mediawiki offers some of the functionality but not all. I like
the idea of marking pages as read. One other feature would be the possibility
of compiling your personal "book" from wiki pages using some sort of
bookmarking system.
I'll have a look at mediawiki if there is something available that we could
implement to the ooo wiki.
Frank
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