Re: Who's the Wizard(ess) with Word 2000 Style Sheets?

["Jonathan Stoppi" <stops -at- qualum -dot- com>]

> Originally, "Witch" came from the Old English pronunciation of "wits", and
> basically meant anyone with above-average smarts. In that day and age, a
> bright brained folk with some knowledge of herbal medicine was a witch -
> and, at least back then witch was a gender-neutral term. wizard came from
> "wise heart" (which is why, in both Yorkshire and Cornwall, one can still
> find inscriptions to the "wizhard" - may have originally been "wise hardt"
> though you are correct that this term is traditionally male - there is
some
> speculation that this was a common term for those of the Druidic class
> during the Celtic period of European history. I'm done now. does this
count
> as etymological discourse?
>
> I mainly use Pagemaker, Freehand, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, GoLive, and
> LiveMotion right now - what are the inherent advatages of FrameMaker over
> PageMaker?

Collin

Thanks for the fascinating insight into the etymologies and the history
(Jane - I hope you're reading this, too!).  I'm always a sucker for those,
and have a soft spot for Yorkshire in particular for personal reasons.

In answer to your question: "What are the inherent advatages of FrameMaker
over PageMaker?" -

I was also a faithful Pagemaker user till v6.5 came out. Having written and
designed four published textbooks and several editions with it (well,
actually five, but the first was too small to count), I was eagerly
expecting features that I had sorely missed in the program till then - in
particular, automatic (and self-updating) running headers, a
hyperlink-cross-reference facility, and sidebars where a subheading (of the
kind that I now call "stagepost") can be placed on the same line as the
paragraph it heads.  However, all of these were still absent.  Having waited
for them in vain for 2.5 versions, I began to look elsewhere - even (gasp!)
consider switching to Quark for the purpose.  Having heard about FrameMaker
here and there over the years, and particularly in the context of software
manuals of the biggest and the best (e.g. Cisco), I decided to have a closer
look.  It was a revelation.  FrameMaker proved to have all these and much
more, and I've never looked back.

What I don't understand is why Adobe, six years after swallowing Frame
Technology whole, still hasn't done the obvious thing, namely, combine it
genetically with the best of PageMaker (Story Editor, versatile text frames,
etc) to create the ultimate tool for long-document creation and
e-publishing.  Instead, they've buried untold millions creating and
promoting a buggy, memory-hog platypus called inDesign in a desperate bid
(yet again) to challenge Quark's stranglehold on print magazine publishing -
by all accounts, without much success, and bizarrely without even have some
of Pagemaker's advantages.

It's the kind of cackhanded thinking that only large conglomerates whose
management have taken their eye off the ball are capable of.  It's also the
real reason why I'm worried about FrameMaker's fate, no matter what people
say: in such hands, good products almost always come to grief.  Unless
they're slapped very, very hard in the face with a large wet halibut, by
thousands of people like you and me.

Thanks for asking. :-)

- Jonathan Stoppi
The Tall Guy (with a beef)
stops -at- qualum -dot- com


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