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----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Emory" <danemory -at- primenet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2000 10:15 AM
Subject: RE: Slow Down Development, NO; Speed up Minds, YES
| ================================================================
| But MS-Word fails on all those counts (most of all it fails on the quality
| and completeness of the documentation), yet its dominance goes
unchallenged.
| I doubt if more than 10% of knowledge workers would use MS-Weird for long
| technical documents if they weren't forced to do so by either their
| management or their customers. There are competing products (e.g.,
| FrameMaker) that are superior in all respects to that piece of crap. Name
| one that has even a remote chance of mounting a successful challenge to
its
| dominance.
|
First, your arguments would have more value if you'd stop the name calling.
Calling it "MS-Weird" sounds "cute" but it really doesn't add anything
factual. Second, your business seems to involve designing documents and
consulting from a Framemaker perspective. That hardly casts you as a
someone looking at things dispassionately...
People use Word for a variety of reasons, most having nothing to do with its
goodness or badness, or appropriateness for the task. Word is cheap. Word
is ubiquitous. I don't think you can find a Wintel machine out there
without it installed (or, for some people, uninstalled). When everyone has
easy access to a product, a 'better' product has a much, much harder time
making inroads.
There are lots and lots of resources out there to learn Word. Most people
know the interface and can muddle their way through things with Word. If
Framemaker changes its interface to make the mechanics easier, it'd fare
better in the marketplace.
| ====================
| | Nullius in Verba |
| ====================
| Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
| FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
