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> In a way, it is sensible. It's quicker and easier to
> turn out a finished document if you work only on
> finishing the content, and not on both finishing the
> content and polishing the appearance. When I do a user
> manual I'd probably save a couple of man-days if I
> didn't have to care where the page breaks are. And it
> is most important that the information be complete and
> accurate. Polished page layouts and formatting may make
> things easier to read to some extent, but when it comes to
> finding information in a document a good TOC and index are
> even more important.
I don't think this holds.
The AECMA Spec 1000D (or any other spec of the same kind) must have
taken hundreds of thousands of man-hours to finish, from the time when
the decision was taken, to the finished spec. Since we're talking about
a spec that defines a specific markup using SGML/XML, even spending only
100 hours on creating a sound, logical and visually & typographically
stringent stylesheet would increase the presentation quality
substantially - and 100 hours compared to several hundreds of thousands
is nothing.
Furthemore, I am not talking about "polished pages". I am talking about
using common sense typographical rules as well as ideas about
information analysis to make the content as accessible as possible, once
it is needed by the reader.
But I agree with you regarding TOC and indices. They are v.important
indeed.
