Re: Odd-size Manuals

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Susan -
>
> Yabbut, pretty much all the users I've talked to over the years prefer
> the smaller books because they take up less desk real estate. AAMOF,
> once when I sent out beta dox in 8.5x11, a user commented that the
> book was way too big. Totally confused as to why 100 or so pages was
> too much info, I called for clarification. The ensuing conversation
> regarding crop marks was remarkably entertaining <g>.

Since the 1980's, available real estate on a desktop has been shrinking,
as companies try to shoehorn more and more people into less and less
space.  The people who make partition-furniture can tell you that the
standard sizes for cubicles are smaller now than they were 10 or 15
years ago.  Further, since a computer/monitor/keyboard/mouse now
inhabits some of that real estate, there's significantly less room for
open books.  Which is one of the reasons the major computer book
publishers, early in the 1980's, went to 7 x 9 format instead of other
popular (at the time) sizes.  Sybex, for one, did and still does a lot
of focus-group research related to how users liked/disliked various
features.  Those of us who were writing books for these publishers in
the 80's got used to page sizes like that real fast.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

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