For the record, I NEVER said that PDF was designed to create manuals
only for printing, but rather, that it is indeed a "final form file format."
That implies neither just printing nor just viewing. It does imply a
fairly static document layout, though, with the possibility of limited
interactivity.
- Dov
> -----Original Message-----
> From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com
> [mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of
> Diane Gaskill
> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 12:42 PM
> To: Jeremy H. Griffith; framers@lists.frameusers.com
> Cc: charlene_glo...@emainc.com
> Subject: RE: PDF to Word Conversion
>
> Hi all,
>
> I normally would never contradict Jeremy or Dov, but I don't think it's fair
> to say that PDF is designed to create manuals only for printing. In the
> olden days, yes, but not now.
>
> We provide all our docs in PDF to our customers, but we designed our manuals
> to be used primarily on line. We include links and other features to help
> users find and display information quickly. We're working on adding GUI
> walk-throughs using Captivate, and adding 3D animated graphics using
> Captivate and FM as well.
>
> But I agree with Jeremy on the FM to Word issue. We actually tried that
> with some of our docs because the enginering division in Japan does not have
> FM yet (sometime this year, hopefully). Yes, we could convert the docs with
> mif2go, but it's a real hassle to do the conversion, get their updates in
> word, update the FM docs, and then convert the updated docs back to Word
> again. It is just not a productive way to get edits. We finally got them
> to accept PDFs and use the reviewing capabilities to make comments and
> edits. It's what the tools were designed to do and it works.
>
> However, the above process does not work for info on new features,
> especially when they include drawings and/or screenshots. For that, they
> still send us Word docs because Word is currently the tool they have.
>
> Diane Gaskill
> Hitachi Data Systems
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