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It looks old-fashioned to me. I read hundreds of PDFs a year and so
few of them use left/right formatting that it's startling when I come
across one. It interferes with skimming.
Left/right adds value to no one except those users who print
double-sided and bind the pages. I've heard that's still common in
some fields.
I publish to online help, PDF, a help-center format for the web site,
and Zendesk. The main advantage of PDF in the modern era is that it
gives you everything in a single downloadable file.
On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 11:13 AM, Rick Quatro <rick -at- rickquatro -dot- com> wrote:
> Who does it look old-fashioned or weird to? This is an opinion that is not
> shared by everyone. "Unless a lot of users are going to print..." So you
> essentially admit that left/right layouts add value for some of the users.
> Do you know what percentage of your users might print and bind pages? Even
> if it is a small number, do you make your documentation less useful so it
> doesn't look "old fashioned or weird"? And, if you are still using a
> page-based format like PDF, you haven't dumped all holdovers from the print
> era.
>
> Eschewing "bookthink" or dumping the "print era" sound more like
> philosophical or fashion statements. I would be more concerned with
> presentation and usability than not wanting to appear old fashioned.
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