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Subject:RE: Layout program or markup language From:Tom Johnson <johnsont -at- starcutter -dot- com> To:"'Micaela Kayser'" <Mica -dot- Kayser -at- topcall -dot- co -dot- at>, TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 13 Apr 2000 10:20:48 -0400
Hello Mica,
Welcome to the technical writing profession!
On Thursday, April 13, 2000 8:21 AM, Micaela Kayser
[SMTP:Mica -dot- Kayser -at- topcall -dot- co -dot- at] wrote:
> I am not a technical writer per se, because there is no college degree
for this in
> Austria. I studied translation and knew fairly early that that was not
where I wanted to
> be. I landed a job as a technical writer in a company that doesn't have a
documentation
> department.... yet. My experience is also quite limited, since all I've
done straight from
> college was work in a documentation department as a translator.
>
> My problem is that the developers are currently writing the 100 to 500
page manuals in
> Word an it just isn't getting the job done, too many bugs and surprises.
We all agree that
> we need to find another solution, but what?! I read so much about
Pagemaker, Framemaker,
> QuarkExpress in the mailing list and the archive. It seems that layout
programs are being
> used over markup programs like TeX for instance. Why?
We use layout programs because we can. Kind of like why people climb the
Matterhorn, because it is there. Layout programs allow us to put together a
reasonably "finished" product without having to anticipate how a "markup"
will appear when printed. As far as FrameMaker, it gives you a lot of handy
tools (cross referencing, indexing, conditional text, book-building
capability and importable styles) that are such a big help to people like
us who extensively re-use pieces of older documents. Certainly, if you
prefer to use something like TeX, you could probably find someone to handle
the finishing for you.
You will probably get lots of opinions (on the scale of a holy war) about
which program people feel is best. I like Frame, it helps me do my job
faster and more reliably than I've been able to accomplish with Word or
PageMaker. PageMaker and Quark are mainly high-end desktop publishing
applications that are used mainly for things like magazines with a short
life span. Interleaf and Frame are geared more towards technical documents
and documents that get re-used, recycled, rejuvenated and overhauled over a
longer span of time (sometimes over the course of several years).
People who translate documents sometimes like to shy away from PageMaker
documents. Most of them seem to be able to deal with Frame fairly well.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any specific questions about
Frame.
>
> Can you please tell me what the best solution is? (I feel at such a
disadvantage for not
> having studied technical writing in the US!!)
>
>
> Mica Kayser
> Mica -dot- Kayser -at- topcall -dot- co -dot- at
>
Tom Johnson
Marketing Coordinator/Technical Writer
Elk Rapids Engineering Div., Star Cutter Company
johnsont -at- starcutter -dot- com - work
thomasj -at- freeway -dot- net - personal
