Title: Reader-Friendly Media for the Documentation of Software Projects Author: Andreas Rüping e-mail: rueping@acm.org Address: sd&m software design & management AG Thomas-Dehler-Straße 27 D-81737 München, Germany Phone: ++49-89-63812-408 Abstract: When documenting software projects, authors regularly face the question of which media they should choose for their documents. Basically, authors have two different options: Print is the traditional medium; it’s been available for centuries. Until the present day, print still offers numerous ergonomical advantages. On the other hand, online documents are becoming more and more popular. They offer navigation and search capabilities that can never be achieved for printed documents. This decision can be quite intricate since documents produced for one medium cannot automatically be used for the other as well. On the one hand, an online document cannot be used as a print document since it doesn’t print very well. On the other hand, producing online documents requires more effort than just putting a print document online; authors have to add hyperlinks and to adjust the document to screen layout. However, the real question is not print vs. online, but how these two options can be combined. Authors can of course choose print for some documents and online for others. But they can also choose to make documents available for both media. The choice of a medium should reflect each document’s typical usage. It’s the combination of media that makes documentation reader-friendly. The patterns in this paper explain the advantages of each medium, and give some guidelines on when to use which and on how to combine them.