Checklist “Getting the Most from your Documents”

This checklist helps you think about the situation when you are struggling with the production or publication of documents.

Everyday situations

Do you feel that Word or Acrobat may sometimes be used inefficiently?
Are people spending much time fiddling with formatting?
Are new documents started by taking a copy of an existing one and removing most or all of the content?
Is there a recurring need to extract content from PDF files?
Are you satisfied with the way your house style is implemented?

Do you feel that Word could be used for more than creating static text documents?
Do you have a specific problem that you feel might be solved by document programming?
- adding interactivity to documents?
- automating the creation of documents?
Are there any constraints that have a bearing on possible solutions?
Do you have some sort of an idea as to how to solve the problem?
- Would it be useful to dynamically create documents from text held in a database?
- Do you want to include Word-to-PDF conversion as part of an automated process?
- Would it be useful to have Word-to-PDF conversion with features not currently available?
Do you spend a lot of time adding links and other features to PDFs by hand?

Do you have programmers who could work programmatically with documents?
- PDF (JavaScript, batch sequences, forms, Perl manipulation)
- Word (VBA)
- Perl, other Open Source
What is their current level of expertise?
- they program documents already
- good programmers, no experience in document programming