subject: Beyond Pdfs [print this page] For a lot of people, the Internet is their first port of call for many kinds of information. And for a lot of organizations, PDF is the primary format for presenting information on the Internet. The fly in the ointment here is that, by and large, people hate reading PDF files on the web. PDFs just are not browser- or browsing-friendly. But PDFs are cheap "" they"ve already been created for print purposes "" so companies post them to their websites. In most cases, they should stop.
To reach your audience, you need to deliver your information in formats that are easy for readers to use. PDF is a print-oriented format, and what works for print often doesn"t work for the web, for mobile devices, or for other electronic media. PDF is not the answer to every content delivery question. Nor does formatting content for print and then saving it as HTML really address the problem. "Save as HTML," as many organizations realized even in the early days of the web, seldom produces the kind of clean, professional-quality output that you need.
XML, and particularly the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) XML language, enables you to optimize content for different media. Because an XML-based system handles formatting and content separately, it lets you create one set of source files and then generate PDF files for print and HTML files for the web. You can also generate output in e-learning formats, online help formats, and other file types that provide a user experience richer than basic HTML. This is why the requirement for multiple output formats is one of the 7 Signs that an Organization Should Use DITA.
Creating output in multiple formats is a familiar practice to many professional technical communicators, and writers in other disciplines have also started to adopt the practice. Those who have tried formatting content for both good online delivery and for print have noted a variety of issues which make simplistic "Save as HTML" features inappropriate. For example:
"Cross references "" In print, a cross reference to relevant information is a page number pointing the reader to another section of the document or to another resource. Online, the cross reference is a hyperlink to the referenced information.
"Indexes "" Books and other lengthy documents in print typically include an index. Online, the index will be a searchable database.
"Fonts "" Print output and online output often use different fonts to optimize readability in each medium.
"Layout "" Different layouts may be required in print and online outputs. For example, information presented in the main flow of an online document may be shown as a sidebar in print. Layouts may also be adjusted for different print applications, e.g., 8.5" x 11" in North America and A4 in Europe.
"Glossaries "" In print, unfamiliar terms are defined in a glossary found at the back of the document. Online, unfamiliar terms may also be defined when they are encountered, using tooltips that appear when readers hover their cursors over the terms.
"Navigation "" Printed content uses a table of contents to help readers find and flip to the chapters and sections they want to read. Online content uses a navigational pane that provides hyperlinks to the specific content.
"Images "" Print and online publications use different image sizes and resolutions. For instance, a print publication will include a large, high-resolution image that is scaled down and/or cropped when posted online. The smaller, low-resolution image will load faster and can be linked to the full-size version for users who want to see the higher-quality image.
When you create content with XML, you can design different templates, known as stylesheets, for different output formats. You can then generate different outputs, and the medium-specific optimizations for them, with the push of a button. XML is tool-independent, so organizations using XML as the basis of their content strategy are not locked into the limitations of any specific tool. XML has the flexibility you need to reach your audience with the right information, in the right format.
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