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While it is not something that appears particularly useful for most long document techwriting chores, since it is often the case that we get involved with short, highly-styled pieces you may find a German desktop publishing program interesting.
The full program is freely downloadable and free to use for *noncommercial* uses (such as learning). This free version, which requires you to affirm each time you start it that you understand it must not be used commercially, is called Ragtime Solo. The licensed, commercial version is $495.
I have only played with it so far for two hours or so, but I am already incredibly impressed with its ease of use. Rather than importing spreadsheet tables from external programs, for instance, it has spreadsheet functionality built in--including graphing capability.
You can also download the manual in .pdf format...and, by the way, you can save layout projects in .pdf also without an external program. The English manuals are outstanding, by the way, as is the brief tutorial that plays on opening the program for the first time and is immediately accessible thereafter. It also exports to HTML, although I have not yet tried it.
There are versions available for both Mac OSX and Windows. If you have need for such a tool, I recommend it highly even from the little I have seen thus far. (It also has about the shortest learning curve for a dtp program I have seen). The Windows version is about 33 MB to download.
I'm familiar with InDesign, PageMaker, Quark, Ventura, and various lesser publishing programs...and I can see that this will quickly become my favorite for most of the sorts of day-to-day projects such as brochures, posters, and the like that come along. Of course, I'll be happier when I am once more regularly employed and can then license it to use it for the commercial jobs I also do!
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