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:How really useful MSWord is on long projects From:Michael Little <ur004135 -at- MAIL01 -dot- MEL -dot- AONE -dot- NET -dot- AU> Date:Tue, 5 Aug 1997 17:31:36 +0000
I saw this on comp.text.frame group, and I though I would repost it,
in line with my statement that using word on a long project really
justifies buying a copy of FrameMaker:
"Subject:
Another disgusted Word user joins the ranks!
Date:
Mon, 04 Aug 1997 11:38:27 -0700
From:
Ezra Steinberg <Ezra -dot- Steinberg -at- centurasoft -dot- com>
Organization:
Centura Software Corporation
Newsgroups:
comp.text.frame
Saw this on the news group for formatting long docs in MS Word. See
the punchline at the end! :-) Ezra -------- I just sent a 600-page
book with at least two bitmaps per page to print. I created the book
entirely and painfully in Word97. It has internal xrefs, TOC, and an
index. Master docs seemed to have limitations, RD fields was clumsy,
and I didn't have time to really play with the much vaunted Tech Tav
template, so, the doc is all one Word file.
The bottom line is that long documents can be created as one Word97
file.
However, I ran headlong into the Red X and several template
problems--creating and using templates that vary too much from the
standard Microsoft fare causes severe headaches. Positioning graphics
was painful, at best. The float over text feature disables file
recognition for linked graphics. Under certain conditions, Word97
seems to grossly misrepresent file size and printing portions of
multi-sectioned documents and using Goto Page is difficult.
The bottom line is that I purchased Adobe FrameMaker for my next
project.
Sean."
Unlike Microsoft, Adobe have actually released a new version of
FrameMaker (5.5) that does actually improve your productivity. A
Cheers!
Mike Little
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
