TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
> 1. Can you structure a document visually so that the same image works
> equally well online and on paper?
Posed this way, I'd have to say no. The reasons you posed in your original
posting say it all. About the best you could aim for would be a compromise that
worked equally well on both. But then again, that's why I like going *from*
structure *to* display because you can optimise the presentation for the
medium.
> 2. Can you structure the flow of information so that the online
> sequence works equally well on paper?
This is certainly possible. One of the advantages of an electronic source is
that you can layer mutliple pathways onto the content. The print sequence could
just be set up as one particular pathway. SGML would, in fact, enable you to
specify orders of components down to the individual element level by a number
of different mechanisms. For example, the para element could contain a
psequence attribute that specified it's order in print sequence (this is *not*
an approach I'm recommending, mind you... just an illustration of how such a
thing could be accomplished). So you could have
<para psequence=2>This is paragraph #27 ...
...
<para psequence=1>This is paragraph #73 ...
...
<para psequence=3>This is paragraph #216 ...
in your online version. Online, the contents occur in the order shown, with
lots of other stuff in between. On printing the document out, para #73 comes
first, followed by para #27 (and nothing inbetween) etc. Lots of other ways to
do the same thing.
Consider this added benefit: for certain types of documents, you could solve
the ugly problem of redundant text. For example, if I have a section that
defines the FRUMBAH command, I can write it once. I can include it in sequence,
in both my online and my paper versions, by reference. It appears in sequence
however many times you need it, but you only have one write up of it to produce
and maintain.
I'm going on vacation and will be gone until the 5th, so please don't take a
few days silence as lack of interest. This is a cool thread.
