Re: Frame vs. Word Results

Subject: Re: Frame vs. Word Results
From: Craig Sanders <csanders -at- BEST -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 17:43:24 -0700

Hello, Kuovonne!

Take heart! While learning Frame is not a casual experience, I think you will find
it to be far more robust and versatile than Word insofar as long technical
document development and publishing is concerned.

Something else you might want to consider: There is a company called Quadralay
(www.quadralay.com) that produces a product called WebWorks Publisher. Using Frame
in conjunction with Publisher, you can convert your Frame books and files into a
variety of online formats, including HTML, HTMLHelp, WinHelp (Yes, WinHelp!),
JavaHelp, and OracleHelp. This means that you can develop and write your printed
docs concurrently with your Help material. Frame is a natural for this since it
provides a methodology (context tags) that let you set up Publisher to only "see"
certain text.

Have a look at the product, if you will. I have used it for the last three years
for jobs ranging from ten pages to over twelve thousand pages and have found it to
be both robust and versatile. Also, I hear Quadralay is offering a 30-day
evaluation (full featured) version of Publisher, available over the Internet.
Technical support is provided without charge during the evaluation period.

Hope this helps,
Craig Sanders

Kuovonne Vorderbruggen wrote:

> This thread seems to touch on my current experience
> with starting to learn FrameMaker. Up to now I have
> worked almost exclusively with Word because I use
> RoboHelp in a small company.
>
> What I like about Word:
> - Macros, macros, macros
> - extensive find & replace with combinations of formatting & wildcards
> - navigating tables with arrow keys in flow of text
> - field codes
> - attaching templates to automatically update styles
> - having multiple generated lists per file
> - outline view
> - print preview
> - help system
> - sharing files & importing files
> - customizability
> - autocorrect
> - view options, esp. seeing spaces
> - "insert" menu, esp for special characters
> (my Frame QuickReference is about to fall about,
> and I've put a shortcut to Character Map on the desktop)
>
> What I like about Frame so far:
> - table styles
> - large documents / books
> - generating & formatting TOC & index
> - master pages
> - references pages
> - file size
> - making .pdf files with links already there (although it bombs when I try it)
> - paragraph autonumbering
> - associating graphics with paragraph tags
> - multiple columns / side heads
>
> If anyone knows how to do the any of the things that
> I like about Word in FrameMaker, I would love to know,
> as I am trying to teach myself FrameMaker, and am
> having a hard time using the help. (And taking a class
> isn't an option right now.)
>
> As a side note: I have yet to find something that I absolutely
> cound not do in Word at all, including conditional text.
> I've found lots of things that are a pain to do in Word,
> but writing macros automates most of the tedious work,
> and when I open a document that uses coding I haven't
> worked with for a while I tear out a few hairs trying to figure
> out what the heck I've done.
>
> Side note 2: I recently got a copy of William Horton's
> "Secrets of User-Seductive Documents" and it states
> that the layout was done with Word!
>
> -Kuovonne
>
> From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000==

--


"We do not see things as they are...
we see things as we are."
-Anais Nin

From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=




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