TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Paul Sparrow-Clarke wondered: <<Is there any good software that easily
creates charts and graphs for use in Word documents? I find that Word's
charting feature is, to put it politely, somewhat limited and difficult.>>
Although it's possible to create passable graphs in Excel, it's far more
awkward than it should be, and you don't have the same level of control that
a dedicated graphing package offers. Moreover, using Excel creates a strong
temptation to embed spreadsheet objects in Word, and that's often a recipe
for disaster; at a minimum, it makes it difficult to move the files
elsewhere and enormously increases the file size. It also makes it difficult
to produce good PostScript output if you're following that kind of
publishing workflow.
The package of choice used to be "DeltaGraph" after they released the first
or second patch to the current release; before that, they were often a bit
buggy. I don't have a current URL for the developer, but you should find it
plus a review of other competing packages at PC Magazine's Web site
(www.pcmag.com). Search their articles database for the review of
graphing/charting software (or for DeltaGraph itself) to find the review
article they did a few years back.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an
accumulation of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a
house"--Jules Henri Poincaré
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Are you using Doc-to-Help or ForeHelp? Switch to RoboHelp for Word for $249
or to RoboHelp Office for only $499. Get the PC Magazine five-star rated
Help authoring tool for less! Go to http://www.ehelp.com/techwr
Free copy of ARTS PDF Tools when you register for the PDF
Conference by April 30. Leading-Edge Practices for Enterprise
& Government, June 3-5, Bethesda,MD. www.PDFConference.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.
