TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: Documentation Group needs advice! From:Beth Mazur <mazur -at- MAYA -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 3 Jan 1997 16:03:46 -0500
At 12:41 PM -0800 1/3/97, Paul Nagai wrote:
>I am not a PageMaker user, so I don't speak from my own experience, but the
>discussions I've seen here and on framers focus on Frame's superior ability
>to handle, among other things: table of contents, lists of tags, lists of
>tables, lists of figures, robust indexes, etc....all things that are going
>to be required in Marlene's 100,000 pages (if I remember the figures
>correctly) of documentation...are handled gracefully by FrameMaker.
>PageMaker, if it supports these functions, doesn't support them as robustly.
>...And, please, no DTP wars! I wasn't slamming PageMaker ... really!
No problem. I did miss the original figures. And given that PageMaker and
FrameMaker both come from Adobe, it seems natural that simple product
differentiation requirements would prevent these two products from being
ideal for all the same documentation needs.
However...I responded to Paul after ignoring the last couple of times I saw
PageMaker being dissed as a DTP tool. It is true that PageMaker 5 lacked a
number of features essential to doing real user documentation. But PageMaker
6, as I said, appears to me to be a real tool. But I'll concede it's not
"the" tool for 100,000 pages.
Beth Mazur
MAYA Design Group
mazur -at- maya -dot- com
TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send commands
to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/ or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html
