In helping to convert a three-ring-bound procedure manual to something better, I’ve noticed that even though the Internet has been around for years, people struggle with parts of its concept
Background
The manual I’m talking about here is a very technical document. It details procedures for fingerprint examiners to follow in all aspects of their jobs. It’s existed in a three-ring binder for many, many years, and is critical to the job for reasons that aren’t important in this context.
Problem
The problem is that the document is ‘ordered’. Like most ‘normal’ documents, it has a table of contents, with chapters that group similar content together. Unfortunately, no one reads it that way. When you need it, you need a specific part of it, but no one reads the whole thing (or even a whole chapter) in the normal course of business. It’s a reference for those times when you can’t remember a very specific item or task.
Observation
There probably are some neat terms out there that describe this concept better, but I’m calling them ‘Ordered documents’ and ‘Unordered documents’ (and hereby claiming the rights to all profits that my ‘new’ terms generate<evil laugh/>). An ordered document is like a novel...you read chapter 1 in order to understand chapter 2, then on to chapter 3, etc. You don't (usually) skip around the book and read just certain parts of it unless your bookmark falls out.
An unordered document is more like our manuals (probably like most technical documents). We might go directly to the recipe for a Ninhydrin solution, then click from there over to safety protocols, then to standards and procedures, etc. We don't read through anything start to finish (well, most people don't anyway).
The web works like this…it’s littered with links in places that will take you abruptly to somewhere else. Many people intuitively understand this concept when they see it. But when writing documents, we struggle because the only way most of us know how to write documents is in 'order'. Putting a 'link' in the middle of a paragraph is still uncomfortable to many people. Worse yet is converting a document that has been ‘ordered’ for its whole life.
Solution
Yeah, right. There are a number of solutions out there, probably many I’ve never even heard of; for this case, I’m pushing DocBook (not Dita…sorry Jes!). I’ve spent a ton of time all over Bob Stayton’s site and have managed to squeeze out some good proofs of concept