RE: Open door for Word flames...

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

Keith Cronin wrote:

<<I like FrameMaker a lot. It's great. But let's be honest - how many people
can sit down at a computer, NEVER having used Frame before, and
successfully create a satifactory document? I'd say virtually nobody. You
have to LEARN how to use Frame.
Word is dangerously easy. By that I mean, you can sit down and create a
pretty decent document knowing virtually nothing about how Word works. And
that's the danger - you get spoiled, and want to create flawless documents
with little or no effort.>>

This all seems to be tool wars to me and dangerously close to getting fingers
cut off by Eric Ray for being Off-Topic. But, I would like to see some of those
sweeping generalisations and assumptions tested.

Neither tool (indeed I would say no tool) will create flawless documents with
little or no effort. That's what we're all paid to do as professionals and why
no matter how many may want to claim that a tool is just a tool, it's the reason
each of us becomes more proficient with our current tool over all others. Even
then, I think what many are trying to point out is that Word will NEVER make a
flawless document. As far as Word ever doing anything with little or no effort,
I don't think I was the only one to chuckle at that statement. Does Word do
anything with little or no effort? ;-) Yes you can launch Word and bash out a
quick document with no styles and lots of manual tweaking, but many (myself
included) would find this to be terribly flawed. I'd challenge anyone to explain
to me how the same isn't true for FrameMaker and how the Myth of the learning
curve is true. If you already have Word experience and no FrameMaker experience,
Fine. You have to learn one or two new things. If you know Frame and not Word,
the exercise to cross over to Word requires just as many (I'd say more ;-) )
mental gymnastics. If you knew neither, it's a toss up.

This always seems to hover around what many wantonly claim to be "intuitive" and
tends to spill over onto the assumptions they make about audience. I doubt a
novice computer user plunked down in front of Word would be any more productive
than a novice computer user plunked down in front of FrameMaker. Provide
identical templates and style guides for each and novice user to average writer
should be just as productive in each and with just about the same level of
learning required.

It takes an expert in any tool to produce expert results with it. The only room
for comparison that I see is how much time and effort it takes to become an
expert in a given tool and how much time and effort is required to maintain the
work flow with the tool given expert knowledge. Take into consideration that
this expert knowledge does not need to reside in every user in a group. It takes
only one Word or FrameMaker Guru to set up templates and scripts and so on. All
others in a given group could be complete novices.

Which tool creates the best document after being handled by experts I leave up
to the Word Worshippers (Wacky Worders?) and FrameMaker Fanatics (Flaming
Framers?) to fight out.


Eric L. Dunn



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