Re: gearing up to be a tech writer

["Gomez, Philip F" <GomezPF -at- ch -dot- etn -dot- com>]

Michael Davidson said:

	Phil Gomez said: (Off the record, if you get a job and they force
	you to work in Word, I'd
		quit and find another. Some would say I'm biased; I think
I'm just
	spoiled. :)

		No matter how tongue in cheek this comment may be, I don't
think
	it's good advice to be giving out to people thinking of joining the
	profession. I don't have any gripes about framemaker etc but I've
been using
	Word for ten years and it is a very useful tool. As has been said
before
	work within its limitations and remember that it is primarily a word
	processor. I would be the first to admit it has its faults and has
annoyed
	me very badly at times, but to say someone shouldn't take a job
because the
	company uses Word is a bit silly.
		Mick 


My apologies for that comment having too much bite -- I've been bitten by
Word many times (a few biggies) and I tend to be unnecessarily harsh. Fact
is, Word *is* a very useful tool and it has it's strengths (i.e.: outline
view). And you're right, Word is great for composing text; it's really a
word processor with formatting features thrown in. Conversely, FrameMaker is
a document formatter with word-processing features thrown in. 

In my opinion, they are suited to different types of documents; and, in
general, I feel that FrameMaker is best suited to the kind of documents that
technical writers typically develop. (I've had the most trouble with Word
when I'm working with other people, especially non-tech writers -- it's very
difficult to get a group of people to use Word consistently.)

And I retract my above statement: I would not turn down a job just because
they want me to use Word. When you need work, you do what you have to do.
However, I would definitely prefer a job where I would use FrameMaker over
one where I would use Word.




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