Re: Frame vs. Word

[Chris <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>]

Top ten reasons to use Maker over Word:

1 - You will get to associate with a bunch of religious bigots who think 
you're interested in their subjective and not-too-helpful opinions/funny 
little comments.

OUCH!!!  OK - please don't flame me too much!

In fact, I'm a Frame Weenie, myself.  My reasons - not in particular 
order, and probably not 10 of them:

Predictable results - Maker doesn't try to do things for me, so it 
doesn't surprise me with it's guess at what I want.  Also, it seems to 
be more solid in terms of data integrity all around.  I have a heck of a 
time figuring out what Word will do next.

Books - Master Documents in Word are broken, according to the Word 
community.  A Maker book is a collection of document files, with some 
rules for handling them as a unit - numbering, blank left-pages, etc. 
For long documents, this is quite useful.

Marker interface - People say the FrameMaker interface is hard to learn. 
 However, I have yet to make sense out of Word's bookmarks, and 
whatever the other equivalents are.  In other words, cross-references, 
index entries, and other meta-data that you store in the document are 
easier to deal with in Maker.

HTML output - Maker gives you native functionality to manage the HTML 
output pretty darned well.  You can split long docs or books into 
sub-pages.  You can include calls to JavaScript or Java files.  It's 
pretty impressive, and much cheaper than 3rd Party HTML generators.  It 
works for me.

PDF - The PDF output just seems smarter, more compact, better.

Migration to SGML - FrameMaker+SGML is out there if you need it.  Think 
of Maker+SGML as the outlining feature in Word, only absolutely 
configurable, and able to produce industrial-strength SGML.

Template Design - For me, it just feels more solid and easier to set up. 
 Once the templates are set up, the author can predict how they will 
behave.

No macros - That means no viruses.  I have gotten Word documents from 
clients that contained viruses.  I'm sure the people who sent them were 
well-meaning.  However, as far as I'm concerned Word doesn't have a 
macro feature either, because I NEVER turn it on.  Just call me paranoid.

Oh, I have more reasons, but I don't have the time to spend on it.  Go 
to the FrameUsers web site  at
http://www.frameusers.com/
You're bound to find links to some documents that treat this in more 
detail.  Also, all above comments are entirely biased.  I am a certified 
Frame-Weenie, and like all *normal* people, I approach new software with 
dread - which means I undoubtably *resist* learning Word.  (Please - 
this is a normal and exaustively documented phenomonon, which accounts 
for the marketing strategy used by MS to flood the market with Word and 
Windows, among other products...  It works, but I got into Maker before 
Word.)

Cheers, and I hope you make the right decision for your situation.

cud





^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com

TECH*COMM 2001 Conference, July 15-18 in Washington, DC
The Help Technology Conference, August 21-24 in Boston, MA
Details and online registration at http://www.SolutionsEvents.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.