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.
Re: PageMaker vs. InDesign (vs. FrameMaker) for university courses
Subject:Re: PageMaker vs. InDesign (vs. FrameMaker) for university courses From:"Dick Margulis" <margulis -at- mail -dot- fiam -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 3 Apr 2001 15:19:57 -0400
First of all, rumors notwithstanding, Adobe keeps telling anyone who will listen that they are not dropping any products. It remains to be seen whether they are telling the truth, but for the moment why don't we just give them the benefit of the doubt?
Second, to answer your question: Y'know what? It doesn't matter what tool you teach. Teach people an approach to learning whatever software they encounter, rather than trying to teach mastery of one tool. But devote a lot more time to teaching them design principles. Teach them the importance of markup languages in general. Teach them to use styles in whatever software tool they encounter. Teach them how to think about document structure. Teach them a few basic truths--not old wives' tales--about page layout and typography. Teach them something about the ways images get onto paper or onto the Web. Teach them the difference between a raster image and a vector image. Teach them when to use JPEG and when to use GIF. Teach them how to do a screen capture and scale it so it doesn't throw a moiré.
I've been putting squiggly black marks (well, now they're mostly colored marks) on paper or other media for forty-odd years. (Maybe that's forty odd years.) I know what squiggly marks I want to put down and I know where I want to put them. The tool is just a means to make it real. Teach them that.
Dick
msammons -at- ix -dot- netcom -dot- com wrote:
>MY QUESTION
>
>I know the rumors have been flying about Adobe dropping FrameMaker.
>-Anyone know if they are going to drop PageMaker?
>-Should we teach InDesign instead? Anyone even use it? Will our students benefit by learning one package over the other if our goal is to teach tools/principles?
>
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
