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One of the interesting statements I occasionally come across here and at
conferences is the notion that online documentation "saves trees".
Interestingly, my experience is generally the opposite, but not necessarily
for the reasons you'd expect. Here's why:
First and foremost, I find the best online documentation often appears on
lists such as techwr-l, and since I'm not yet sufficiently organized to
maintain the tips and tricks I see online in some kind of searchable
database, I end up printing them out and filing them in increasingly
cluttered binders. I do someday hope to enter the 20th century* and make
this information more convenient to use, but I'm not nearly there yet, and I
suspect a surprisingly high proportion of our audience also haven't made the
jump to electronic archiving of such information.
* For those who celebrated the millennium last year because it "felt right"
despite vocal objections from the mathematically correct, who claim it
begins next year, yes, that's an intentional statement that I'm about a
century behind on my reading and filing. Alas!
Second, documents provided in PDF to save publishers the hassle of printing
and binding them usually consume twice as much paper as professionally
printed manuals. Why? Because very few of us take the time to print the
manuals double-sided. And while online PDF reference manuals are great in
theory, in practice I see more people printing them and putting them in
binders than I see using them online. Pace Jakob Neilsen, the reason isn't
that PDF is inherently unusable; the reason is that very few people design
PDFs to be used online.
Third, most online help systems (including Web sites, not just WinHelp)
remain so poorly organized that when we do finally find an obscure topic, we
immediately print it and store it somewhere so that we don't have to go
through the hell of searching for it again. Of course, if you're like me,
you probably then lose the printout, and have to find the topic and reprint
it, thereby doubling paper consumption.
So while I don't doubt that some folks really do save trees by using online
documentation online, I don't think this is an open and shut case in favor
of online docs.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"I vowed [that] if I complained about things more than three times, I had to
do something about it."--Jon Shear
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