Appearance
As in the examples below, reference cards are typically one to a few pages in length. Pages are organized into one or more columns. Across the columns the reference is split into sections organized by topic. Each section contains a list of entries, with each entry containing a term and its description and usage information. Terms might include keywords, syntactic constructs, functions, methods, or macros in a computer language. In a reference card for a program with a graphical user interface, terms may include menu entries, icons or key combinations representing program actions.
Due to its logical structure and conciseness, finding information in a reference card is trivial for humans and requires no computer interaction. It is therefore convenient for a user to print out a reference card. While reference cards can be printed on card stock, it is common to print them on ordinary printer paper. With the advent of portable electronic devices that can display documents, digital reference cards stored in PDF or HTML formats have become more common. This in contrast to user guides, which tend to be large & verbose and to have a very low information density (in comparison to reference cards).
Read more about this topic: Reference Card
Famous quotes containing the word appearance:
“A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy ... is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)