Recommendation by NWCG Information Resources Management Working Team
Accepted by the NWCG - June, 1998
Date: 6/26/1998
Subject: Interagency Document Exchange Standard
Background:
There is increasing awareness of incompatibilities between the word processor documents used by federal and state agencies. The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service Joint Information Resources Management Meeting was held on October 27-31, 1997 in Phoenix, Arizona. One of the issues identified for action was electronic mail attachments, e.g., that documents sent between FS and/or DOI agencies are not always filtered (converted) correctly. The IRMWT informally asked the Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region, to conducts tests to determine the text sharing capabilities and limitations associated with all the major word processors used by NWCG agencies. Special recognition goes to Jon Skeels for conducting a thorough and well-documented test. Detailed information about this test will be posted on the NWCG Internet site.
The following Interagency Document Exchange Standard was accepted for recommendation to the NWCG by the IRM Working Team at the April 22-23 meeting and is in response to the issue of mutually acceptable document formats.
Recommendation:
This recommendation provides a standard that will enable routine sharing of editable text. A fundamental principle is to simplify, avoiding advanced features which may be expected in a final, published document, such as tables, headers and footers, graphics, page breaks, borders, shading, special tab settings, non-standard fonts, or columns. The IRMWT recommendation is that complex formatting features are best added only when a document is finalized, using any agency's word processor, and published in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF); free Adobe Acrobat readers are available for all NWCG organizations. They may be retrieved via the Internet at:
Formats to use
Based on test results, the following document file formats offer the best editable document viewing and/or conversion between NWCG agency systems:
Rich Text Format (RTF)
HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)
Paragraphs Format
Avoid using DCA (DCA/RFT).
Fonts to use
Only two fonts currently are uniformly displayed in most Java-enabled applets, used in Internet web browsers, and also generally available on all NWCG agency systems. This will ensure better uniformity when converting documents between software products. These include most equivalents or variants of:
Courier - a fixed font, useful for information where text space and alignment relationships are critical, such as columns of numbers
Times - a proportional font, generally more attractive and easier to read
Margins to use
There needs to be an allowance for unprintable areas, binding space, future headers and footers, etc.; editable content will be more uniformly displayed if these generic margins are used:
Top: 1 inch
Bottom: 1 inch
Left: 1 inch
Right: 1 inch
Pitch to use
A minimum font pitch size will improve readability and uniformity:
Courier - 10
Times - 12