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Subject:Re: cross-reference between documents From:Tim Altom <taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET> Date:Fri, 14 Nov 1997 15:52:04 -0600
At 02:53 PM 11/14/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Let me propose another equally valid solution: Use Ventura. It "does this
>very function....but it costs big bucks, and the training is long and
expensive.
>And just as difficult can be the paradigm shift it creates in a department,
>from a page-by-page approach to a document-centric one."
Valid, but unlikely. Five years ago you'd have gotten no argument from
anyone. Had Xerox paid attention to its little gold mine it could've been
the Aldus of the long-doc industry. Now Ventura's been retooled, forgotten,
and it's darn near moribund. My partner was a Ventura expert some years
back. She was a beta tester when she worked for Xerox. Now she hasn't seen a
copy in many months. If the client's or employer's argument for Word is that
it's common and easy to find people familiar with it, going to Ventura is
going to be even less likely than a move to Frame. But theoretically, yeah,
you're right. I just didn't think Ventura would appeal to a shop already
awash in Word.
>Either way works, either way is *not* easy. But one of those should be
>considered if you're going to do serious publishing. Word, WordPerfect
>and Ami Pro all offer some attempt at publishing, but in reality, they're
>word processors with pretensions. They aren't really publishing tools.
>
>Word and WordPerfect have a single strong selling point: Everybody
>uses it. Which is akin to saying, "We do it that way because we've
>always done it that way." That is, no reason at all, just habit.
>
Somebody mentioned that WP packs can do things Frame can't. True. I can have
five letters, three memos, and a flyer out of Word before Frame boots up.
But Simply Written doesn't traffic in letters, memos, or flyers. We do long
stuff mostly, and Frame can pull the guts out of Word when the page count
rises.
Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
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