Niklas Pivic’s Reviews > Every Page Is Page One > Status Update

Bob Lee from Symantec said they had done a study of those customers who said they preferred PDF, when they offered them both PDF and HTML-based topic-based assistance online they found that even the people who said they preferred PDF all actually selected the topics and the HTML output at a ratio of 26 to 1.

It's fun to read about potential reasons for keeping documentation internal...

"Competitors will steal our ideas

This one has always mystified me a little, but I have heard it from several sources. Some companies fear that if they put their documentation on the Web, their competitors will copy their products."

Well...maybe not applicable; if people search Google to find answers, will they really find *your* stuff?

"Technical writers rarely have the time and opportunity to design a book with a mature holistic view of the subject matter. Even if you own the whole book and start from scratch, as opposed to updating an existing book, you are always documenting a moving target against an unreasonable deadline. This is not a work environment that is conducive to creating a brilliantly designed curriculum."

Word.

"If you have had any experience with structured writing or have read a book about it, you may have come away with the impression that it is one specific set of rules, one specific tool, one specific standard, or one specific XML schema such as DocBook or DITA. Nothing could be further from the truth. Structured writing is a wide and diverse field encompassing many methods, practices, tools, and technologies."