Jim Harris wrote, in response to Gary:
Q: ... what is bad about offering choices?
A: It's more work, and if ROI is negative it should not be done.
From an ODT, it's one click to produce a PDF. Not exactly a lot
of work for us. Of course, if the source document is not ODT,
then turning the source into ODT in order to make the PDF is more
work. That brings us to the question of whether some of our docs
(eg "user guide" type chapters) will be provided in ODT as well
as, say, on the wiki.
You said, "I am assuming the on-line WWW pages are the "system of
record"." In that case, the question really is: how much effort
is it to produce the ODT? I suspect that to produce a good ODT
will be quite a lot of work. But once that's done, making a PDF
is trivial.
Is anyone suggesting we not provide ODTs of "user guide" type
material? I certainly hope not!
Q: Why should one go through [more work] just to produce the PDF version?
A: Exactly.
Gary was, I believe, talking about more work on the consumers'
part, not the producers' part. See above. If we produce the PDFs,
there is no extra effort for those consumers whose needs are
better served by a PDF.
C: There is an advantage of having both forms (PDF and ODT [sic]) ...
R: You and others keep saying that, and I keep asking, "What _is_ the
advantage of PDF (or of any non-OOo format)?"
I gave my answer to this in a previous note: people can read them
without having OOo or another ODT-reading program installed.
Almost all computers have a PDF reader installed.
Any discussion about ROI comes down to how one sees one's
audience and how important one thinks it is to (at least attempt
to) meet the diverse needs of different sections of the audience.
Clearly we differ in our opinions on this.
So... how do we balance the needs of the consumers and the needs
of the producers, in terms of both content and distribution
methods? Of course we need a way that minimises the effort for
the producers (us), but IMO not if that shortchanges the
consumers. OTOH, if trying to provide too many choices means we
do none of them well, that also shortchanges the consumers. But I
just can't see why providing PDFs (*in addition to* ODTs) is any
big problem for us... but producing ODTs might be a problem.
--Jean
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