| Paper a mature document technology
|
|
Paper documents have taken centuries to evolve a variety of techniques that enhance usability. We have come a long way from medieval documents of unformatted text blocks. Now we have tools like Chapters, Subsections, Paragraphs, Tables of Contents, Indexes, Footnotes, Bibliographies, and page numbers to make text documents more navigable. When paper documents are read, the reader is free to flip through the document non sequentially, and rely on the format of the paper document to make it a simple matter to find relevant information. E-documents - documents designed to be read on the computer screen - are still in their infancy, and have only begun to develop the formatting conventions for documents intended to be read on computer.
| E-document formatting demands
|
|
At the moment, many of the so-called "electronic documents" are merely word processor files that have been saved as HTML and posted to the web. When documents written for one medium get converted into another medium, it often results in an unwieldy and unworkable document. The best example of this is the Starr Report, a document designed for paper, but most often read online. On paper, the Starr Report reads like a conventional paper document with a linear organization, and the formatting tools common to this type of report. But when the document was published online, it became extremely unwieldy to read. When read online, readers could no longer "flip" through the report - they had to scroll down through the lengthy sections of the document. Footnotes had to be read in a separate window, and required the reader to switch back and forth between open windows. The table of contents no longer was an aid to navigation, since the original pagination of the document was useless in its online form.
Yet even though the Starr report was designed for paper, with a little effort it could have become a much more readable e-document. As a promotional tool, the Trellix company took the time to convert the Starr Report into a bona fide e-document, and greatly enhanced the readability of the document for the online reader. Their version of the Starr Report had several useful features for the online reader. A document map allowed the reader to get an overview of the document and skip sections randomly. Section outlines on the left of the screen give the reader a context for the text in the main body of the report. Best of all, the footnotes come up in a separate frame at the bottom of the window, allowing the reader to easily glance at the relevant footnotes. Even though the Starr report was written for paper, the stylistic conventions of this electronic version made it into a workable text for online reading.
Beyond the formatting of e-documents, there is the need for a different writing style. Web usability guru Jakob Neilsen argued in a recent article that one of the fundamental characteristics of the readers of electronic documents is that they are generally in a hurry. With other articles a click away, the online reader tends to scan quickly looking for relevant information. The basic principle seems to be to minimize the cognitive effort on the part of the reader. Especially on the web, readers can enter the document from multiple directions, and generally read the document for many different purposes. The impatience of the online reader necessitates a different writing style in order to make the e-document more accessible for a networked readership. The Good Documents web site describes some of the qualities of effective web documents:
 |
• |
Summary paragraphs should go at the beginning of a document, not at the end. |
|
• |
Subsections of the document should have title headers, to facilitate easy skimming. |
|
• |
Links should be annotated with relevant descriptions so readers can easily assess relevance. |
|
• |
Bulleted lists can help to lay out sequential information. |
Currently, there seems to be a big gap between the desire to read e-documents and the ability of the average user to create an e-document for others to read. Corporate intranets have become very trendy, and has greatly increased worker access to online documents. But for the most part, workers using intranets seem to be creating paper documents that are available over the network, rather than hyper linked e-documents.
Part of the problem is a lack of simple tools to facilitate e-document production. The word processor is a tool for composing text on computer for output to paper, and while Microsoft Office 2000 has been enhanced with a variety of "web publishing tools", this enhancement pretty much boils down to making it easy to convert word processing files to HTML. This is perhaps an important reason why offices are increasing their use of paper: The users of word processing files want to read the document in its native format - paper.
While the "web designers" created pages for publication on the internet, the rest of the workforce seems to be creating "paper" documents that get saved to an intranet, or sent across town as an e-mail attachment. There is something very strange about writing a document in a word processor, printing it out for editing, sending it as an e-mail attachment, and then having the recipient print it out again just to read the document.
| Need for e-document tools and training
|
|
Clearly, something is going to have to change as the workforce becomes increasingly reliant on e-documents for the dissemination of information. By the end of the decade, the expectation of receiving a document in paper form will likely shift to an expectation of being able to access an electronic document. After all, why print 1000 copies of a trend report when you can disseminate it to the intended audience through a web site? Today the tools for document production are either grounded in print production (Word processing and graphic design programs), or require learning a new set of technical skills (web design programs and HTML).
New tools are going to have to be created - tools that make the production of e-documents as easy as using a word processor. My candidate for a model for this kind of tool would be Trellix. It was originally designed as a tool for the creation of intranet documents, but it has evolved into an application for the DIY construction of sophisticated web pages. (the aforementioned version of the Starr report was constructed in Trellix).
If e-documents become the primary mode for the transmittal of textual information, then it is quite clear that this is a set of skills that is seemingly being ignored in education. The integration of computers in schools seems to be primarily geared towards the training of students as users of the web, rather than as potential producers of web content. Students are trained how to use internet resources in their research, but at the moment the information gathered is still supposed to be integrated into a research paper.
| Impact of Virtual Students
|
|
While the Millennial generation may be web-philic, their elders are still primarily geared towards paper. One development that could potentially accelerate the resolution of this dilemma is the rise of virtual education. Professors have it hard enough reading and grading dozens of student papers at the end of the term, so one has to wonder how enticing the prospect of reading dozens of e-mail attachments from cyber students, or having to print out hardcopies for each student paper.
If students are learning virtually, then it is only sensible that their work should be created in a native electronic format. If professors begin to demand e-documents instead of papers, students will have to pick up the necessary skills of e-document production to comply with the wishes of their instructors. Paper measures of page length may become a word count quota and citations could become links to the online sources. Virtual students might be the first to be required to learn e-document production skills, but more mainstream students would certainly follow (especially if e-document skills are in demand among employers).
| Narrative as Countertrend
|
|
Interestingly, one countertrend to the increasing use of hyper linked e-documents may be the persistent popularity of narrative texts. The technologies for hyper linked narratives have been around for roughly the same time as e-documents, yet e-documents have proliferated madly while hyper linked text narratives have pretty much gone nowhere. The fundamental reason for this difference may be the fundamental linearity of textual narratives. While conventional analytical texts can be fruitfully converted into e-documents, the same does not necessarily hold true for narrative documents. The links and tangents of an e-document only serve as a distraction to the flow of a narrative document - skipping ahead and jumping around in narratives often spoils the fun. Even the current crop of E-books seems to recognize this by marketing them as portable products for basic linear reading - not as wireless tablets for accessing online e-documents.
Will the popularity of narratives persist? Well, the best way to answer that would be to talk to some children...that is if you can get them to put down the latest Harry Potter book.
Written by Mark Justman
Copyright 2000
Posted 01/23/00
http://go.to/futureplex |
