Document formatting update

[Callie Bertsche]

Hi Framer Friends,

 

I'm using FM 7.2, will soon be updating to FM 9, and output PDFs through
Acrobat and HTML through WebWorks.

 

The manuals that I maintain for our company have become very
dated-looking, and it looks like I might be given the exciting
opportunity in these next couple months to update the formatting of the
manuals. I appreciated the recent conversation about serif and
sans-serif fonts, and am wondering if anyone has suggestions or
guidelines or links to web sites on best practices or
aesthetically-pleasing document layouts/formatting. The changes must be
mainly executable through a FM template or other automated means, since
some product manuals are quite long. 

 

To give you an idea of our status, these are the initial changes I'm
hoping to make:

 

- Change font from Times New Roman to something that looks better, like
Palatino 

- Change page margins from optimizing for print (different left and
right) to optimizing for screen-viewing

- Update the look of our Note and Tip insets: images and layout

 

Thanks, and sorry if this question is too broad! I won't be offended if
no one answers. :) (If you are really bored and interested in helping,
you can see our manuals at our web site. For example:
http://tecplot.com/support/rs/docs.aspx. Just bear in mind that we have
been limited in the resources allotted to keeping up the look and
quality of each manual. :-\ :) ) Please feel free to reply directly to
me and copy the list, since I receive the list in digest mode.

 

Callie Bertsche

Tecplot, Inc.