Subj : Re: How much should I charge for fixed-price software contract? To : comp.programming From : blmblm Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 02:55 pm In article <20d9g1hmq5p7jbjomqm6mgtacs74ioka46@4ax.com>, Chris Sonnack wrote: >blmblm@myrealbox.com writes: > >>> [shrug] Might work (and I may even be off base about the willingness >>> to accept *tendered* HTML). I will say that *I* would never trust my >>> resume to someone's personal HTML renderer, line wrapping, settings, >>> etc. >>> >>> If I send a printed resume, Word doc or PDF, I **know** how it's going >>> to look, and that's very important to me in this case. >> >> You do? I was under the impression that the exact appearance of a >> Word document can depend on the printer driver (or something) in use >> on the machine where it's displayed. > >IME, if the printer is bitmapped at all, you get pretty good results. >If you send a nicely formatted Word or PDF doc to a text line printer, >then not so much. Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. The kinds of differences I was thinking of were more like "in this version, printed on machine 1, page 1 has 60 lines, but in this version, printed on machine 2, page 1 has 62 lines." I'm fairly sure I've seen an example of this, but my memory may be faulty (meaning "I may be thinking of how OpenOffice seems to print MS Word files with different page breaks from Genuine MS Word"). You seem to be talking about more subtle differences in appearance. (I don't know how to say that better; it may still not be clear.) As far as I know, you don't get this sort of thing with PDF, though there might be problems with missing fonts (which, again AFAIK, can be avoided by embedding fonts). >> The variation's probably less than with HTML, but is it really zero? > >No, but hugely different. HTML is a total crapshoot in that regard. >PDF and Word at least give you fighting chance of accurate repro (and >given any "modern" printer, your chances are quite good, I think). Agreed. I still think MS Word is iffier than PDF, but maybe it's not a big difference. (Well, unless the document is being sent to someone who doesn't have MS Word installed and isn't likely to install it. But that's another can of worms.) [ snip ] -- | B. L. Massingill | ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor. .