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Given that Ventura has been passed around from owner to owner like a
bad penny without much real improvement in function, and that almost
no professional pubs. shops use it anymore, drop it.
Frame reads and gracefully imports most formats (although I have no
first-hand experience how it handles Ventura documents.)
The major reasons for Framemaker:
* Works as seamlessly as can be across different platforms
* Actively updated by a strong owner (Adobe)
* Boasts the largest experienced user base of any DTP program
* Features reasonable support and update policies.
Drawbacks:
* Not intended for $700 PCs or for use with small displays,
* Quark Express is better for heavy process color work(despite Quark's
infamous customer dis-service and abusive upgrade policies.)
* Overkill for short (sub-30-page) documents, for which Word is OK.
* Pagemaker best serves documents with heavy doses of irregular
layout.
I've searched the archives, and couldn't find much information on
this.. I just got a new job where I need to assess the tools we're
currently using and recommend changes (if any). We're currently using
a very old version of Ventura (4.2) under Windows 95 and Word for
Windows 97.
My options are:
1) upgrade to the latest version of Ventura
2) switch to FrameMaker or PageMaker
3) switch to another program.
Our documents aren't large (100 - 150 pages) but are *very* graphics
and formatting intensive. For example, there is extensive use of
tables of contents, figure numbering and cross-referencing over
several files (which kinda lets out using Word as our publication
software).
....
I'm not familiar with Ventura, although all existing documents are in
Ventura... a strong argument for staying with it. But, I'm just not
sure it's the most appropriate application. At the moment I'm rather
leaning toward FrameMaker,...
