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> How many hours of study & hands-on does it take to learn FrameMaker?
Depends. When we were running our internship program two years ago, we taught
Frame as part of the required skillset. We found that, if people knew Word (and
they had to know at least one word processor in order to qualify as an intern) they
could learn Frame over the course of a week, while working on other projects. If
they only knew the basics about Word, without how to use templates and how to apply
or change styles, it took longer to learn Frame. Obviously. If they were fairly
skilled at Word, they learned Frame in a day or two.
The point is that there are a lot of similarities between Word and Frame, and in my
experience the easiest way to teach someone Frame is by using Word as a reference
and pointing out what's different. We found, generally, that if someone knew Word
they already knew about 75% of Frame. However, we weren't after complete mastery
of either product - in most cases, details like creating macros and more difficult
things like that were left to "free time," which of course none of us had.