ONSCREEN POSSIBILITIES. . . TODAY.

Abstract

After a brief review of the current state of onscreen documentation (including some of the major criticisms and deficiencies), the authors describe a project to demonstrate how hardcopy manuals can be presented in an onscreen environment. In the process they touch on a variety of hardcopy techniques and technology. A prototypical implementation was constructed that supports a conceptual model of the manual (which contains a hierarchy of structural information) as well as usage models for that manual. The prototype is thought of as a markup-linked display processor with late binding of display attributes. With this type of delayed binding, the display processor is able to use a single, centrally maintained copy to dynamically format pages onto different types of screens, accommodating personal preference.