Re: Has WebWorks fallen off the map?

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techpubs -at- genek -dot- com>]

It does seem that FM is the "tech writer's tool of choice," but frankly, among
the
*non-tech writer* people who hire the tech writers, a constant question is why
can't
the docs be done in Word, because "just about everybody in their office and out
in
their field teams has Word and why should they spend money for a tool that
nobody
else in the company will know how to use?"  If you're going into a company that
doesn't have any writers in-house to do online help, Robo and its Word-based
UI looks mighty good to those kinds of folks.  The majority of API docs that I
have run across over the past 10 years or so have been done in Word, not FM,
because they're either done by the developers or done with the idea in mind that
the developers would maintain it after the tech writer is gone.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carolyn Dismuke" <cdismuke -at- salesforce -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2003 4:22 PM
Subject: Has WebWorks fallen off the map?



We've been interviewing technical writers for an API contract. But of the few
applicants that have API experience, NONE have WebWorks experience. They all
have Robo, HTML, and many years in tech writing. You'd think in this economy it
would be easy.

I thought FrameMaker was the tech writer's tool of choice and WebWorks (although
not without its faults) went with it. Is WebWorks too much work? What are people
using instead? How do most FrameMaker shops get their docs in online format?



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