Bastien PROT: XPS une alternative au format PDF

XPS (XML Paper Specification) est un format de fichier électronique à présentation fixe comme le PDF du concurrent Adobe qui préserve la mise en forme du document et permet le partage des fichiers sans perte dinformation. Le format XPS garantit que, lorsquun fichier est affiché en ligne ou imprimé, il conserve le format souhaité.

Rédacteur Technique, Le (2007). (French) Articles>Document Design>Standards>XML

Becoming a "Business Communications Service Provider"

Print service providers have historically been defined by output technology such as commercial color, sheet-fed, web offset and large-format. These print technologies by themselves can be easily commoditized. As the market begins to migrate to a digital infrastructure, Print on Demand – or POD – represents something far more interesting and important than technology for technology’s sake. POD hardware and software offer the potential for new ways to communicate business information. The primary focus of successful users of POD technology is building a services portfolio and positioning their companies to provide 'business communications solutions and services.' These users are looking at digital printing and the associated services as a way to decommoditize printing and increase both profitability and customer loyalty.

Pellow, Barbara A. Digital Output (2004). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Printing

Best of Show -- Winners of STC's International Competitions  

Read about the Best of Show winners of the 2005•2006 competitions in international technical art, international online communication, and international technical publications. Also, meet the winner of the international student technical communication competition.

Intercom (2006). Articles>TC>Document Design>International

Beyond Help: Making Help a Core Component of an Electronic Performance Support System   

With the advent of HTML Help and the ability to embed Help directly inside an application, there’s been an increased interest in creating Help systems that are seamlessly integrated with their host applications. By blurring the line between the application and the Help that supports it, and by developing Help that automatically responds to user actions, application developers and Help authors now have the ability to develop true electronic performance support systems (EPSS). With this new ability will come a paradigm shift in the ways applications are developed and documented.

Wexler, Steven S. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Document Design>Help>EPSS

Beyond the Phone Book  

Whether you know it or not, 'database publishing' probably describes some of what you do. Here's how to do it better!

Kvern, Olav Martin. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Document Design>Databases

The Bleach Wars  

Blank paper...could anything be more basic and uncontroversial? Who'd have thought those innocuous white sheets could cause such a ruckus? Learn what the fuss is about and why paper mills and environmentalists are lining up on either side of the presses.

Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Paper

Bloom's Taxonomy in Technical Content Development

Technical writers provide information enabling users to learn and apply various technologies. In the endeavor to enable users, technical writers often need to use different strategies of classification, presentation, and structuring for the different types of information. However, in most cases such classifications or decisions about the best method of presentation and optimum structure are guided by instinct and are rarely heuristic. In this article, we present an established classification of information called Bloom’s taxonomy (of educational objectives), which can help technical writers make decisions about content classification.

Robbani, Wasique. KeyContent.org (2006). Articles>Document Design>Academic>Contextual Inquiry

Book Design

An overview of the typical components of a printed technical book and the typical content, format, style, and sequence of those components.

McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Articles>Document Design>Publishing

Book Layout, PDF Creation, Preparing Documents for Press

This is a 10 hour, 5 week course taught one-on-one or in a small group (2-5 people) that is an introduction to the Adobe InDesign application. In the course we will cover the fundamentals of designing rich documents, including books, pamphlets, and posters.

Newman, Rob. University of California San Diego (2004). Academic>Courses>Document Design>Printing

Booklet Publishing

Write a book this afternoon. Sound preposterous? To the contrary--you can create an information-packed, 16-page booklet using a single sheet of paper in little more time than it takes to type the text. Use it to market your product or service, to tell the story of your organization or to offer tips and how-to information to prospects and clients. Print five or ten copies directly from your laser printer or take your master artwork to a commercial printer and have it reproduced by the thousands. No matter how you cut, fold and staple it, this book is proof-positive that big things do come in small packages.

Chuck Green. Ideabook.com (1999). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Printing

Bridging the Gap Between Design and Editorial

With both Adobe InDesign® CS and Adobe InCopy® CS in your publishing workflow, writers and editors can compose stories in InCopy at the same time designers are laying out the pages using InDesign—without overwriting each other’s work.

Adobe (2003). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe InDesign

Bulletproof Your Brochures

Brochures are good for some things but not others. The key to not wasting your money is to understand what brochures do well, and what they don't do well.

Bennaco (2005). Articles>Document Design>Marketing

Buying Laser Paper That Won't Jam  

How to choose paper for laser printing.

Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Paper

Charles Morris's Semiotic Model and Analytical Studies Of Visual and Verbal Representations in Technical Communication    

In this article, the author demonstrates that the semiotic model proposed by Charles Morris enables us to optimize our understanding of technical communication practices and provides a good point of inquiry. To illustrate this point, the author exemplifies the semiotic approaches by scholars in technical communication and elaborates Morris's model through analyzing visual and verbal elements of technical communication brochures from semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic levels. The discussion of semiotic approach reinforced by various examples illustrates that the semiotic model can be a tangible theoretical and practical tool to help students and practitioners study and analyze the use of visual and verbal elements in technical communication.

Fan, Jiang-Ping. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Document Design>Assessment

Choice Paper  

Even the pros forget the basics sometimes. Constance Sidles gives a quick refresher course on asking yourself, and your client, all the right questions when you're choosing paper.

Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1998). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Paper

Cleaning up PDF Documents in Acrobat

If you are posting your PDF document to a web site, you'll generally want to upload a clean copy that will streamline the viewing experience for your site visitors. This tip outlines a quick way to remove unnecessary annotations, widgets, JavaScript, links, bookmarks and attachments, along with optimizing your documents for fast web viewing.

Shea, Dan. PlanetPDF (2007). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat

Review: Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design by Kim Sydow Campbell    

A review of Kim Sydow Campbell's book Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design.

Kirloskar, Mukta. International Journal for Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Reviews>Document Design

Color in Technical Documents for Paper, Web, and PDF  

Traditionally, technical documents have been produced in black and white because the cost of color reproduction on paper is high. With new delivery options of the Web and PDF, color is suddenly available at no cost online. And new digital printers make color on paper increasingly affordable. When opportunity knocks, issues tend to follow. Writers will find that using color is a learning experience. There is a new alphabet soup: RGB, CMYK, GIF, JPEG, CSS. There are new buzzwords: spot colors, process colors, digital printing. There are new techniques for representing color in Web pages and in PDF documents intended for paper or screen. Our presentation focuses on practical techniques, not graphic design.

Jackson, Ken and Sonya E. Keene. STC Proceedings (1999). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Color

Color Management and Windows: An Introduction

An overview of Microsoft image color management technology.

Microsoft. Design>Document Design>Prepress>Color

Color Management in PageMaker

Establishing color control on the desktop can prove to be a frustrating task. And when you're dealing with color-critical customers or just plain want decent color, that's not the best situation. This PDF by Scott Olswold and Rick Dumont explains the fundamentals behind color management and then applies this discussion in terms of PageMaker.

Olswold, Scott. Makingpages.org (2002). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe PageMaker

Color Management Made Easy

See the same colors in InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat, thanks to the Adobe Color Engine.

Adobe (2003). Design>Document Design>Software>Color

Color Under Control  

Several years after the hype began, color management is maturing into a useful tool that can solve real problems. Here's a comprehensive overview.

Fraser, Bruce. Adobe Magazine (1995). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Color

Combining Multiple PDF Files

In Acrobat 4, you open one PDF file. Then in the 'document' menu, choose 'insert file.' You’ll have to do this four times to bring your five documents together.

Harris, Steve. PDFzone (2004). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat

Combining the Print and Online Media Offers Synergies

Companies had decades of experience in using printed materials to persuade readers to contact them, whether by phone, mail, or in person. This model of interaction with customers had worked so well and so predictably that we simply moved it online, largely unmodified. That was by no means wrong, but as Web technology and our comprehension of that technology both evolved, the approach proved limiting.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (2001). Articles>Document Design>Information Design

Coming to Terms  

Picking paper involves deciphering a lot of arcane terminology. Here's a quick reference guide.

Sidles, Constance J. Adobe Magazine (1996). Articles>Document Design>Prepress>Paper