The challenge of providing effective documentation delivery mechanisms will be to provide for a range of different purposes, while designing documentation to emphasize the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of different mechanisms. Effective delivery is thus bound up with careful design. In short, for optimal functionality we need to be able to provide flexibility . We believe that providing documentation in more than one format is a realistic goal. While we are fully aware that print documentation and HTML Web documents should not always be identical in design and that adaptation from one format to the other is often needed, we also think that the process of providing Web versions of printed documentation is becoming easier and quicker, due both to available technology and to changes in conceptualising documents.
Some people find HTML editors and design software helpful in their work.
Basic HTML markup can be provided relatively painlessly. As people work now on paper versions of procedural and training documentation, they often already have a Web version in the back of their minds, so they start anticipating links, tables, and other document interrelationships as they compose the paper versions. In other words, if people plan for multiple versions right from the beginning, the process of preparing them becomes smoother. In effect, the responsibility and expenses involved in tracking the numbers of copies needed and in copying or printing documentation would be shifted from LC onto local institutions, while shipping costs could be avoided altogether. Downloadable files thus have real potential for resolving some of the problems encountered when we have focused on distributing paper documents, without sacrificing many of the advantages of paper for those institutions that want to use paper documents or in those situations in which paper documents are particularly useful.