Int'l book sizes

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- FS -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

Holly, there's a lot about page sizes in the archives, but here's what
I think:

        Manuals should be the size they should be.

Who will use them? How? Where? In an office? On a submarine? Down a
mine? Do you ship the manuals printed and bound, or does the end-user
get an electronic copy from which to print?

Look at your bookshelf. How tall are most of your books and manuals?
Most of mine are between 7" and 9" -- I bet most of yours are too.  If
most of your readers work in offices, 8.5" is a good mainstream size
for storage and doesn't take up too much room on a lap or desk.

If your 7x8.5" layout is appropriate for the people who need to use
it then there's no reason to change, IMO.

We internationalites do see lots of A4 paper, but we also see lots of
books and documents in various US formats, and all shapes and sizes in
between. We can cope.

BTW my company went from A4 ("too big") to A5 ("too small"), before
settling on 7.5x9" ("just right").

Regards
---
Stuart Burnfield                "Fun, fun, fun
Functional Software Pty Ltd     In the sun, sun, sun. . ."
mailto:slb -at- fs -dot- com -dot- au


Holly Turner said:
> Is there a standard size for printed documentation in Europe, Japan,
> or elsewhere (other than the US)? ...
> Our current printed documents are 7" x 8 1/2".  I would like to
> maintain the smaller format, but my manager wants to go to the A4
> size because it's "international."