Accessing an internal document on-line easily replaces (i.e. make obsolete!) hard-copy printing. Of course this does not mean that printers will be shut down and removed from our offices. That simply means that designers and managers won't have to print their documents in order to read or distribute them, as they may have to travel in locations were on-line access is not possible. Then, and only then, printing should be provided as a worse alternative to on-line reading or writing.
Internet, and particularly open protocols like TCP/IP HTTP or FTP have made possible to implement cheap Web Documents servers. See NMS/NMS for Data's own HTML document repository wwwd.ntc.nokia.com.
A more expensive alternative has been adopted by few product lines in NMS. IBM's LotusNotes' databases, implemented on project's base are used as Knowledge Bases, particularly by SW projects. Why would it be more expensive than HTML? Simply because of the learning curve of a tool which implements a lot more features than simple on-line documenting and is difficult to learn and, as a consequence, to manage.
Let's mention the fact that LotusNotes implementation is proprietary and thus requires a particular unique interface to access it. That interface is Windows-based and not compliant with ClearCase. We actually ignore what version management it is compatible with.
Email protocols are not considered as on-line access, but rather as information duplication. As such, their use should not be encouraged.
Finally, we should emphasize the need for Internal Documentation base indexation which increases search engines efficiency. Many of these search engines are now freely available in the Internet. Indexes should be split according to the scope in order to speed up keywords retrieval.