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Re: Overcoming archaic doc tools?

Subject: Re: Overcoming archaic doc tools?
From: quills -at- airmail -dot- net
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 13:40:36 -0500

Jeanne said:

I work for a large company (1,700 employees) that still uses IBM BookMaster for all manuals. Help! It is the most archaic un-user-friendly piece of software I've used in a long time. The BookMaster manual was last updated in the late 1980s. I can't believe I'm thinking this, but I miss MS Word!

I've asked the other writers about this. They looked into updating the tools several years ago, but nothing could handle the periodic updates to 10-year-old manuals about mainframe systems. So we stay in the Dark Ages?!

So, can anyone give me advice on how to go about suggesting this company get modern and incredibly more efficient? Anybody deal with converting over 300 manuals to a modern word processing tool? By the way, I'm dealing with a change-resistant group of people---even the people who've been here only 3 years have succumbed to the "change is scary/unnecessary/bad" mentality.

You have two basic choices. Interleaf (now Quicksilver) and FrameMaker.

IBM BookMaster, if memory serves, worked with SGML. If you are not, then you can drop Quicksilver and FrameMaker + SGML. That would still leave the plain vanilla FrameMaker.

The advantages of using a "supported" tool is that it actually works, and you can get answers to problems. Updates usually add new functionality as well as address old problems.

The best bet is that your time to publish would be drastically cut down. I can barely remember, but doesn't BookMaster work on command markup of a text file?

Anyway, you can use a script to change your command markup to Maker Interchange File format commands and bring it into FrameMaker.

By the way, do they accept the use of airplanes?

Scott


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Overcoming archaic doc tools?: From: Jfuller246

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