Re: The case against M$ Word

["Chris Morton" <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Sheesh.... sorry I asked.          > Chris

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Stephen Arrants
<steve -at- mbfbioscience -dot- com>wrote:

> 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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