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>Can anyone tell me the benefits of using Microsoft Word as a page layout
>program?
To be honest, I can't think of any benefits. In my experience, Word
does an adequate job on small, relatively uncomplicated documents,
but FrameMaker and any number of other products do as well or
better.
Moreover, Word has several serious drawbacks:
1.) You have to drill down several levels to change one aspect of a
style, then rise a little and descend again to change another aspect.
I find this arrangement needlessly fiddly and time-consuming. The tabs
in the new version of Frame are much more efficient.
2.) When a document is more than about 200 pages long (more if the
layout is simple, less if it's complicated), performance starts to
choke, even on a fast machine.
3.) Changing a style in a secondary text frame bounces the cursor and
the selected text out of the frame. As a result, you either have to
format in a blank area of the document or in another one, and then
copy the text to the frame or forego using styles altogether.
Both alternatives are a pain.
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Bruce Byfield (byfield -at- direct -dot- ca)
Burnaby, BC, Canada
(604) 421-7189
