Re: Pro's and Con's -- FrameMaker vs InDesign

Subject: Re: Pro's and Con's -- FrameMaker vs InDesign
From: Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: Techwr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2010 11:14:42 -0700 (PDT)

He's looking at this the wrong way. Ask him if the Chinese engineers have made a strong case for going through the expense and difficulty of changing your software. Point out to him the fact there will be expense from the change because of production being disrupted and time being lost. He may be saddling himself  and the company with the burden of spending the time, money, and effort to restaff or retrain people. Have the Chinese made a convincing argument of all that mess being worth it?

Here's a camel-in-the-tent argument:  If he makes the change to please them, what will they want done next for their benefit to the expense of the rest of the company?

How about the fact (I assume) that your FrameMaker licenses are already paid for?


--- On Wed, 10/6/10, Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net> wrote:

From: Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net>
Subject: Pro's and Con's -- FrameMaker vs InDesign
To: "Techwr-l" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 8:59 AM

Uh-oh!

The non-English-speaking engineers at my company's home offices in China use
InDesign to produce non-English-language technical manuals for the company's
line of heavy equipment. The company's group translators (all young
20-somethings) who have no real tech writing experience simply use Word to
produce English-language manuals. The layout and accuracy of technical matter
and English is way below par because those kids simply have no access to the
machines nor the technical expertise to explain things correctly nor enough
English-language comprehension to do a good job. The company just wants books
out on deadline.

We -- a group of 3 tech writers -- here in the U.S. all come from extensive
FrameMaker backgrounds (a combined total of 25 years), with technical expertise
and obviously dern guud englsh. What we do is use those other "English-language"
manuals from China (errors and all) to somehow perform miracles and produce
well-arranged, more accurate and professional tech pubs (operation manuals,
workshop manuals, parts books).

I'm now hearing grumbling that the Chinese engineers who already use InDesign
want us in the U.S. to move to InDesign. We are adamant that it's a bad move and
our supervisor here and who knows nothing about this stuff wants solid
arguements why we should stay with FrameMaker.

We've compiled a list but I'd like to hear from y'all with your own ideas
regarding ease of use, co$t, capability -- anything we can use in our corner.

I've already posted this to the Frameusers list and the silence is deafening.

Help anyone?

-- Ken in metro Atlanta
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Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days.
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References:
Pro's and Con's -- FrameMaker vs InDesign: From: Ken Poshedly

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