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My company brought our books online in 1991. Because there wasn't a
commercial browser solution at the time, we built our own. Since then,
we've superceded or original proprietary format and browser and now
ship our manuals in PDF. Customers get an augmented version of Acrobat
Exchange with our software, although you only need the free Acrobat reader
to view any individual PDF.
For the longest time, I was a die-hard hard copy fanatic. In the last
few years, though, I've come around to the advantages of online
documentation and seldom print out a hard copy of anything any more. We
have sucessfully migrated our customer base into the same paradigm. For
years now, they have been telling us that they like having our documentation
online and seldom order manuals in hard copy form (online is free with
the software, but customers can order certain manual sets for a fee).
Some advantages of conducting an online review:
-- Review is in native format. If your delivery mechansism to customers
is online, making your review online allows the SME to view the
document as it was intended. In my case, printing out a hard copy
for review (on a black and white printer) causes the hard copy to lose
the colors that would be visible online, as well as the hyperlink
structure. In a printed manual the blue hyperlink text color shows
up as black, and there is nothing to indicate that
a particular text area is a hyperlink. Also, when distributing a
book in hard copy for review, the reviewer loses any navigation
aids they might see in the browser such as bookmarks, full-text
search indexes, bookcase structures, or browse sequences
that a "real" user might use to find information about a topic.
-- Version control. I typically make the most current review draft
available via an intranet web page. As such, I tightly control
the source. Sometimes, near the end of a project, I'll put a
new version of the manual up for review daily. This is very handy,
especially if some reviewers are not at the same geographic location
(see the last item), or the project is rapidly evolving. When an
SME finally has time to conduct a review (or recently
made comments and wants to see if those changes made it into the
manuscript), they can simply hit the web page for the latest
manual draft. It would take me much longer and cost much more to
conduct a hard copy review at each design iteration than the five
minutes it takes me to create a PDF and put it on the web page at the
end of my day. Putting up an in-progress online draft at certain points
in the development cycle also allows an SME to let you know if a
"mid-course" correction is necessary.
Note that, during development, I use a variable that puts the date
and time in the footer each time I create a PDF. A more sophisticated
web master might devise a more robust method of tracking who checks
a manual out for review.
-- Not as easily lost. In my years of experience, I can't count the
number of times I've given an SME a hard copy to review, only to
have it get buried under the avalanche of other information they might
have in their office. When they get time to review the manual, they
can't find it. When I place it online, they can go get it when they
are ready. A daily email reminder to reticent reviewers alos allows me
to prompt them, all from the comfort of my own desk.
-- World-wide distribution. I work in Oregon. Several products for
which I write manuals have their engineering teams in Singapore.
Other reviewers might be in other countries or field offices within
the United States. Distributing a manual electronically allows it
to be reviewed anywhere in the world -- instantly. Were I to produce a
hard copy for review I would suffer close to a week in downtime
simply shipping the manual out for review and getting it back.
Someone mentioned the lack of Acrobat Exchange as a barrier to online review.
Not necessarily. At the most basic level, a PDF is a PDF. Some of my
local reviewers like to print a hard copy and mark that up. Fine, since
I'll take review comments in any form in which reviewers are comfortable.
But, a lot of my remote reviewers simply use the
Acrobat Reader (which everyone has), and send comments in a mail message.
Heck, I have even gotten in the habit of doing this when I review
documents from Singapore (which come across in every form imaginable
including PDF, Frame, Word, Excell, Powerpoint, and MacProject). I simply
preface a review comment in my mail message with something like:
"Page 1-5, second bullet, first sentence: ...."
It is not all that big of a deal once you get used to it.
Of course, I have several reasons for doing my reviews online, as cited
above. Your mileage may vary.
-- Walt Tucker
Mentor Graphics Corporation
Wilsonville, OR
