RE: The case against M$ Word

["Stephen Arrants" <steve -at- mbfbioscience -dot- com>]

I've been following this in the background, sitting on my hands....

Richard  Combs is right. You need a document-oriented tool.  You can get acceptable, usable documents out of WORD. For long print documents or print documents where you're going to be reusing content a lot, I'd look at FRAME (incidentally, they've been predicting the Death of Frame since Adobe took it over in what? 1995?) 

I've been using WORD since before it was for Windows, and even I know when it is and when it isn't the right tool.  For most tasks, WORD is great because nearly everyone has WORD. For most tasks, WORD can be a royal PITA because nearly everyone thinks that they can use WORD without any training.

Some questions to ask...
* What is the longest individual document you can see yourself producing?
* How will you structure your document?
* How many illustrations will you have in a document?
* Will the document be part of a multi-document set (separate chapter files? Completely separate books?)
* Will you ever need to produce online documentation from the original document(s)?
* Reviews-how will they happen? Hard copy? PDF or native files?
I guess what I'm getting at is, first define what you want a document to be, and then what you want it to look like. You may need to make compromises for a "best fit".  I've used all the tools talked about on this thread, and my gut feeling is that FRAME is probably the best bet. YMMV, of course.


-- 
Steve Arrants   steve -at- mbfbioscience -dot- com
Writer
MBF Bioscience  (Microbrightfield, Inc.)
+1.802.288.9290 ext: 124
www.mbfbioscience.com




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