[Sigia-l] When Should a Manual be Web-based?

[Boniface Lau]

> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> Behalf Of Frank Siraguso
>  
> Boniface Lau wrote: "Since Word can generate HTML for a document,
> there is little reason to publish in Word format."
> 
> But, IMHO, Word is lousy for HTML. 

What do you mean by lousy?


> Better put the copy into a "real" HTML page. 

There is often a cost/benefit tradeoff when publishing Word documents
for the web.

One extreme is the least effort option of sending a Word document to
the web browser.

The other extreme is manually creating an HTML version and therefore
maintaining two versions of the same document.

An option somewhere in between is using Word to automatically generate
an HTML version. In an environment with a decent content management
system, one can even integrate the automatic generation into a
document publishing process. Such integration is a big plus in
work-flow management. When such work-flow is applied to the creation
and maintenance of many Word documents, the impact can be huge.


Boniface