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That's an excellent comparison of Frame vs OOo. I've had the same evolution of opinion, with my opinion of OOo rising as each version comes out (I wrote my first book on StarOffice for version 5.2 and am now updating my "OpenOffice.org Resource Kit" for 1.1).
I just have a few things to add/emphasize after Bruce's excellent comparison of features. Frame is more about layout. You have much more control through master pages than you do in OOo. Frame's cross references, running headers and footers, and variables are far easier to deal with. And I've gone ten rounds with OOo's conditional text and have yet to make it work reliably. I also like Frame's
numbering better.
On the other hand, OOo files are *tiny* because of being compressed XML format. You can open up the source of any document, view it, and edit it, just like HTML docs. You should also simply keep it around as a tool to fix damaged Microsoft Office files. (When MS Office files crash and can't be opened, just open them in OOo.)
OOo's drawing program (just File > New > Drawing) is spectacular, as Bruce says. You can output to EPS, GIF, TIFF, SVG, darned near everything. Regardless of whether you end up using Writer, explore Draw.
OOo has Wordish editing features so if you work with others a lot on projects, the ability to record edits and reject or accept them is very nice.
OOo Writer is really neither Word nor Frame, kind of its own thing. It has a lot of excellent features, and I think you should definitely play around with it a bit to see if its strengths match what you need. And when learning the program, the most important tip I can give you is: "When in doubt, right click." ;> That'll turn up most any feature you need.
Solveig
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solveig -at- techwriterstuff -dot- com
"Tell Me About Typos When the Software Works." http://www.techwriterstuff.com
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