Scaling down a document?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

New Tech Writer wondered: <<My first assignment is to update and then 
produce a smaller version of a user guide that is mostly text and some 
screen caps. The original guide is in letter size. If I want to produce 
both a new letter size and a smaller version (like A5) - is it ok to 
create a letter size version and scale down the result for the smaller 
user guide?>>

The problem with a solution based solely on scaling is that either the 
initial text will be too large for easy reading, or the reduced size 
will be too small. The simplest and most effective solution is to pick 
a series of font sizes that will work equally well at both paper sizes, 
and design a layout that will reflow the text to accomodate the changed 
paper size. For ease of maintenance, this suggests a free-flowing 
layout in which graphics move along with their associated text rather 
than one in which the graphics are anchored to the page.

You'll have to do some manual revision of the layout, since the page 
breaks will fall differently, but that's life.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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