Re: Recommended Applications

[Maria Townsley <maria -at- MSD -dot- MEASUREX -dot- COM>]

Does anyone use PageMaker?  I keep seeing all these recommendations for
Frame, but I think PageMaker wins hands down.  I've been a happy .. no, an
ecstatic PageMaker user for years. Give me PageMaker and a Macintosh and
I can produce anything you want.  It does everything Frame can do, and does
it better.  It even has a story editor that lets you edit the text in a document
without being distracted by the graphics.  It uses templates, styles, and
master pages.  You can link text or graphics into your document in one or
several places so that a change in the original file can update your document
in one easy step.  (I use this feature a lot when customizing User Guides.)
Long documents?  I regularly customize a User Guide of several hundred pages
in just a few weeks.  (Believe me, I don't get more than a few weeks.)

Of course it does have one shortcoming. (Doesn't everything?)  The only thing
that PageMaker can't do is to create hypertext links for on-line help documents.
I know that it can support Windows help, but our product is multi-platform so
I need to create help that can exist on every platform (VMS, UNIX, and AIX
right now).  FrameMaker can create hypertext links.  For this one reason, I
am currently thinking of switching to Frame.  The thought of all I am losing
in PageMaker functionality and ease of use is not making this a fun or easy
decision.  If PageMaker would just allow me to insert hypertext markers,
it would be the perfect desktop publishing package for every task a tech
writer could do.

-maria