Re: Thanks re Quark v. FrameMaker -- and one more question ...

[Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de>]

>To the folks who weighed in on FrameMaker v. Quark ... thanks so much. It
>helps.
>
>The client has decided to use PageMaker.

Cool. If we're talking about technical documentation, they found about
the worst possible solution. 

(We have a customer who used to do technical documentation in PageMaker.
We have prodded them for some time and they finally switched to
FrameMaker this year. We all but broke out the champagne.)

For technical documentation, PageMaker has all problems that XPress has,
and then some.

Highlights:

- PageMaker _is_ going to become obsolete. InDesign clearly is Adobe's
flagship layout application now, and it does not look as if PageMaker is
going to get more than maintenance upgrades.

- There are very few plugins for PageMaker with which to add missing features.

- PageMaker has two modes - editing and layout. This may not seem such a
big deal until you notice that you cannot search in layout mode - and
cannot see on which page a found word is in editing mode.

- PageMaker is less stable than FrameMaker and cross-platform file
exchange is problematic.

- There is no third-party support for online help and other conversions.  

- etc. etc.

IMHO, the consultant does not know what he's talking about (unless you
have severely misrepresented the task to be solved).

Regards
Jan Henning

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Jan Henning
ROSEMANN & LAURIDSEN GMBH
Am Schlossberg 14, D-82547 Eurasburg, Germany

Phone: +49 700 0200 0700, Fax: +49 8179 9307-12
E-Mail: henning -at- r-l -dot- de, Web: www.r-l.de
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