Re: FrameMaker and MS Word

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

Silly me...  And I thought I was specifically NOT engaging in the tools 
war - just pointing out how a particular tool *could* be used if you 
want.  And also pointing out that if it aint broke, don't fix it.  Or so 
I thought.

But since you ask - Maker has no auto correction features, but a pretty 
groovy spell-checker.  Also a concept of language for text and pfg 
formats which you can use to skip over terms like grep, sed, awk, or 
printf(NULL, "This is a line of code.");.  

The concept of section breaks is not there - use a different file 
instead, and keep the files in a book.  As I understand it, Word section 
breaks are a way to completely change the layout of a document 
mid-stream.  Then that change floats along with your text onto new 
pages, and can take effect in the middle of a page.  Layout in 
FrameMaker is handled via frames and master pages - obviously you can't 
change layout to that degree in the middle of a page without unusual 
difficulty, and having such a change float up and down the page is as 
good as impossible. Maker can specify pgf formats that span across 
columns or not, in addition to using master pages and different files.

As I recall, section breaks are an artifact of the old word processing 
metaphor of having a tab ruler that you insert at various locations on 
the page.  The tab ruler corresponded to the tab settings in a 
typewriter.  You used it to set the number of columns in a document, and 
also to implement tables.  In fact, I believe Word tables are roughly 
based on the same artifact, with a groovy interface put on top of it. 
FrameMaker, as the name might suggest, bases its layout on frames.  Lo 
and behold, Maker tables are based on that same artifact, with a groovy 
interface on top of it.  Just a little useless information here.

Page breaks are not widgets you put into a document, they're properties 
of a paragraph - start at top of page, column, right/left page.

Auto text, as in automagically expanding an acronym, isn't there.  Maker 
has variables and blocks of imported text - ASCII, FrameMaker, or a PDF 
page.