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.
At 09:24 AM 1/26/98 -0700, Marcia Morrison wrote:
>Does anyone have a "rule of thumb" or approximation of how big a =
>document is practical in PageMaker? The standard description is =
>"Pagemaker is for smaller graphic-heavy docs, Framemaker is for larger, =
>text-heavy ones," but that's pretty generic. How many pages are we =
>talking about here? (Of course a manual can be broken up into a separate =
>file for each chapter, but besides that.)
Marcia, I don't believe there ARE any "rules of thumb".... with PageMaker
it depends not so much on number of characters or pages as it does what is
on the pages. In my experience, the more complex the formatting (custom
styles, lots of cross-references, tables, bullet/number lists, etc.), the
less desirable PM is to work with. For a simple newsletter, a flyer, a book
with lots of creative graphics or other artwork, the better PM is to work
with.
What kind of book are you planning? Does it have a lot of cross-references?
Do you use many tables? (PM requires a separate utility, "Table Editor" to
edit tables) Does it have non-standard layout and page size? (PM shines
here) Will it require a lot of editing? (PM likes you to edit in the text
mode, not the WYSIWYG mode) And then there are the questions about
production: color, printing method, etc.
If you want to do some really graphics-intensive work in PageMaker, I
recommend you take a look at the book by Ronnie Shushan and Don Wright,
"Desktop Publishing by Design." It's a wonderful book, written for both the
Mac and PC and its now in at least the fourth edition (I have ed.s 2 and 4)
and they have a CD-ROM with lots of goodies.
Hope that helps. Unfortunately, not so simple as page counts, but worth
investigating once you're clear about what you want to do with it.
Jane Bergen
---------------------------------------------------------
Jane Bergen, Technical Communicator
AnswerSoft, Inc. Richardson, TX
(972) 997-8355
janeb -at- answersoft -dot- com (work)
janeber -at- cyberramp -dot- net (home)
--------------------------------------------------------
