Re: Framemaker

[Frank -dot- Harper -at- ES -dot- ATL -dot- SITA -dot- INT]

aplato -at- aol -dot- com (A Plato) wrote:

>I don't get it.  Hundreds of companies use Framemaker to develop all their
>documentation  -- and Framemaker SUCKS.  I used it for a few months and
>found it one of the most non-intuitive, backwards applications in the
>world.

>Please, some of you Framemaker lovers tell me why the technical writer
>world loves this tool.  I do most of my work in Word or Pagemaker which
>are both much more intuitive tools.  Word usually covers anything simple
>and straightfoward I need to do.

>I have wanted to apply for jobs, yet they always seem to want someone with
>Frame experience.  It pisses me off because Frame is such a worthless tool
>-- and I feel locked out of some of these jobs.

Well Mr/Ms A. Plato, I like FrameMaker. It is a total desktop publishing tool.
It is NOT a word processor, but contains one.

I must convert Word6 (docuemnts with complex macros which attempt to emulate a
destop publishing tool and not very well) monstrosities to FrameMaker as part
of my current job. I have encountered 30-page Word documents that consumed over
19MEGS of disk space. This is not what Word is designed to do. I would rather
deal with ASCII or some other form of text.

I am not anti-Word until it comes to long documents with many graphics. Word is
an excellent word processor and is fantastic at the jobs word processors are
designed to do: letters, short reports, mail-merge, etc. But do not try and
torque a good word processor to make it a desktop publisher. It just doesn't
work.

I feel sorry for you that you feel left out of the job market because you do
not like Frame. Just look for the jobs that require Word and be satisfied. Do
not wait until Adobe changes FrameMaker to suit you. You will have a long wait.
Do not wait for the industry to reject FrameMaker either. Again you will have a
long wait.

I am a contract writer and I continually strive to update my skills as the
market demands. When the market moves to another type of writing tool, I will
update my skills to match the market, not wait for the market to come to me.
--------------------------------------------------------
H. Frank Harper       | Two rules in life:
Technical Writer      | 1. Don't sweat the small stuff.
hfharper -at- pobox -dot- com    | 2. It's ALL small stuff.
--------------------------------------------------------