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Unfortunately, we are pretty well married to Word. Frame has too many
limitations to make it viable here (besides, the last tw here staunchly
refused to learn anything more than the basics of Frame, and repeated told
the manager that things "couldn't be done," or flatly refused to do them the
way they should have been done. Two results: I'm employed, and the manager
has strong feelings against Frames).
Also, the entire documentation will have to be restructured to make it fit
for electronic help. I would rather not maintain 2 separate document sets,
and figure that if I'm going to have to cut-n-paste into something, I might
as well transform the entire documentation into something useful.
I've heard AuthorIT is a mixed bag, some have found it unworkable and
others love it, but have not used it for any real projects myself. I'd
guess its biggest limitation is that it relies on Word for long-document
output, which may or may not cost you significantly in terms of
productivity--if you count salaried labor in terms of cash, that is
With regards to a comparison, FrameMaker is $800, WWP Pro is $850 for
the Windows platform. Microsoft Word is about $200 and AuthorIT with a
FrameMaker filter is $400. The question is, is the stability of
FrameMaker worth anything?
Of course, I recommend you look at WordHelp, too, if you are married to
Word: www.webworks.com
Maybe the HATT YahooGroup is a better place to ask, since there are
WWPers, FrameMaker-ers, and AuthorITites there
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