Today I want to describe some popular doc formats and make it clear what format is the best for delivering technical documentation.

PDF

PDF stands for the Portable Document Format. The format was developed by Adobe in the 1990s to present documents, including text and images, in a manner independent of application software, operating systems, and hardware. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, raster images, vector graphics, and other information.

Today, PDF files may contain different types of content not only flat text but also graphics including interactive and logical structuring elements such as form-fields and annotations, layers, rich media (like videos) and three-dimensional objects, and the like. The PDF specification also provides for encryption and digital signatures, file attachments and metadata.

As you can see, the PDF format will work well for delivering technical documentation since it can provide a wide range of content. Moreover, users can open PDF easily via any device.

DOC

DOC is an abbreviation of “document”. It’s a filename extension for word processing documents. Historically, the extension was used for documentation in plain text, particularly of programs or computer hardware on a wide range of operating systems. Nowadays, MS Word supports not only plain text but also pictures and diagrams. This format is good for small text files like a report, for example, because if your doc has thousand if topics, this format can be opened incorrectly or it will take a long time to load that will be definitely annoying. The second minus is that MS Word doesn’t support GIFs or videos. If you have such elements, you can only give a link to a video, so a user will have to open another app to watch it.

CHM

CHM is a Microsoft proprietary online help format, consisting of HTML pages, an index, and other navigation elements. The files are compressed and deployed in a binary format with the extension.CHM, for Compiled HTML. It is often used for software documentation. Although the format was designed by Microsoft, many document viewer applications can successfully open it.

Source

CHM is a good format for delivering your documentation since it supports navigation elements, so when you export your doc, the TOC will be there, and users can easily find the necessary part.

Online Documentation

Online help is topic-based information delivered to software users in an electronic form to provide assistance or information. It can be opened via any browser. You can learn some online documentation examples here: Documentation Samples. As for me, the online documentation format is the best according to many aspects:

• Users can open it easily, they just need an Internet connection and a browser.
• When you publish your document, the formatting will be the same as you designed. However, when you write a manual in DOC, for example, the formatting can be broken, so it will not be as useful and helpful as you wanted.
• The online documentation format supports any visual content elements: videos, GIFs, diagrams, and the like, so users can watch them instantly in your documentation.
• If you need to export documentation, a help authoring tool can also do it, so you get two formats and all users will be happy.
• If you create online documentation via a professional help authoring tool, your technical writing process will be effective.

These are not all advantages of the online help format but I think they are very strong to try an online documentation tool.

What format do you use for delivering technical documentation?