Quality Manuals in the next age

betreft: niet vormgegeven HTML versie van een folder
auteur : PRAGMA Advanced Document Engineering
zie ook: www.pragma-ade.nl

structured sources

A thorough inventarisation of requirements and structure of the manual and the wishes of the users will save an enormous amount of time and energy in the updating phase of your quality manual. To maintain the sources in an efficient way the manual must have structure. Frequent altering text elements like department names, product names, job names must be identified and declared in one location of the document. Re-use of information is essential.

automated production

At Pragma ADE we work by the idea that the computer must do what it can do. That is the reason that the quality manual is generated automatically and not typeset manually. This applies not only to the layout, section numbering and page numbering, etc. but also to the references. In quality manuals with thousands of references that will become hyperlinks in electronic versions you can not maintain the sources manually. The automated generation of manuals has the advantage that updating will be more frequent and references will not cause any problems.

adapted layout

To design layouts for paper or electronic versions of the quality manual we must consider some design issues. Reading from screen differs from reading from paper. The paper has a different size and a much better resolution than the screen. The way of presenting information may differ from user group to user group and from department to department. Therefore interfacing and typesetting require specific attention. Information must be accessable in a few keystrokes or mouseclicks.

partial manuals

The determination of various user groups of a quality manual is necessary to be able to approach these groups in various ways. When the sources are adequately coded it is possible to generate a manual for each user group or even each employee with its own interface and content.

medium neutral storage

To be able to meet future demands Pragma ADE always stores the information in a well tagged medium neutral format, like xml. In this way we are independent of the operating systems or word processors. Many packages and integral quality systems are very inflexible because of the formats that are chosen to store the sources. In some situations this will lead to a non-innovative attitude when new developments are required, because any re-use of information would require enormous amounts of energy and money.

electronic forms

Forms can be distributed electronically but we can also fill them in via the computer. The data can be exported so that it can be processed by specific computer applications. Pragma ADE can help you to approach your forms in a completely different way.

interactive flows

Flows that are made in dedicated programs always cause maintenance problems. Furthermore those programs are not supporting interactivity. Pragma ADE has developed tools that reduces the maintenance of flows to text editing and the flows are stored in a tagged format that allows us to generated those flows on the spot. This feature enables total hyperlinking if necessary.

Pragma ADE support

Pragma ADE has not only experience in advising on the issues decribed above but is also capable of producing the electronic manuals. The electronic quality manuals that Pragma ADE has developed are characterized by a high quality typography and a well designed layout for screen.

flexibility and quality

Pragma ADE takes care of a medium neutral storage format of your document sources so there will not be any limitations in actuality, extensiveness and structure. The electronic documents are in a platform independent format so they can be viewed on any computer platform. There are many ways of distributing the documents: cdrom, internet or intranet. The paper version is obtained in a higher quality than you are used to.

some examples

The electronic products Pragma ADE has produced thusfar fall into the following categories:

more information

More information on the issues that were mentioned above can be obtained from the Pragma ADE site. You will find there examples of the products Pragma ADE has developed. But you are also welcome to contact us directly by phone or email.