A font is typically designed and created for rendering at a specific
size (well, that used to be true, and it may have changed). The result
is that an 8 pt font doubled in size will be different than the same
font specifically created for viewing at 16 pt. Assuming that our
documents will be viewed at 85% of actual size has a few side effects.
1. Embedded figures will be larger because they are created for a larger
page.
2. It will be more difficult to print, so we will be required to have
two copies of the documentation (one for printing and one for viewing).
I purchased an expensive large high speed networked color laser printer,
and it can not print on A3 paper. The print shop where I work probably
has A3 capable printers, but your home user will most likely not. If you
scale when you print, this can add significantly to the print time
because the entire document is scaled.
3. Fonts will not be viewed at their designed size, which will reduce
readability and may take more computing power.
Depending on the screen reader, this may make things more difficult for
people with vision issues. While reading, it is not much problem to
scroll down through a document, but it is very difficult and annoying to
scroll left and right while reading on screen. Most wide screen monitors
allow you to rotate the monitor so that the document can be viewed with
greater height than width.
I have a good size monitor, and unless I reduce the size, i can not get
an entire page height on the monitor at the same time. I can get all of
the text, but then it is only the text (I lose headers and such unless I
scroll up and down). OK, if I move to my video editing machine, that has
a HUGE monitor that can display the entire page and then some.
Now that I have criticized the layout, I will add that:
In general, the layout does look nice on screen.
You will offer two versions of the documentation, so if someone prefers
Portrait, that is still available, so nothing lost for those that
need/desire it.
--
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
My Book: http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalog/oome.htm
Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
See Also: http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html
