Changing progams to accommodate reviewers

["Martinek, Carla" <CMartinek -at- zebra -dot- com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Rebecca Fleischer

>> At my last job, I used FrameMaker for years, but then the developers 
>> wanted our documentation converted to word to make it easier for them

>> to do reviews.


Oh, this is *such* a pet peeve of mine!  I've run into this in the past
where reviewers complain, "Why can't you write in Word like everyone
else?" 

My standard response has been something along the lines of "It's a
matter of the right tools for the right job -- you don't expect
programmers to write elaborate code in notepad, do you?  Then why would
you expect me to do my job in a program that is not designed to handle
documents of the size and complexity that we're currently producing.
Yes, I *could* do the work in Word, but it will take a lot longer, and
won't be nearly as nice."

Sorry to those who work in Word all the time and love it, but my
experiences with long document  publishing in Word have been nothing
short of descending into Dante's Inferno, and I'll leave it at that.

A coworker and I just had a discussion, and she mentioned that at one
place she worked, a new manager came in and wanted to change everyone
over from DTP-ProductA to DTP-ProductB because the new manager didn't
*know* DTP-ProductA.  No research or discussion on which program better
suited the needs of the department, just an arbitrary decision.

We send PDFs now to our reviewers, which they can comment in and attach
files.  Works just fine.

-Carla
 
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