RE: Using Word for book publishing

["Rick_Bishop" <rickbishop -at- austin -dot- rr -dot- com>]

Scott:  Thou knowest not.  I recently completed a gov't client's 1280 page
manual that had nine levels of headings, 3 different multiple level
numbering sequences, over 400 illustrations, 300+ tables, tabbed index, and
footnotes.
It had 6 different SMEs who all edited it during production (they had
limited skills to say the least).
I'm very familiar with the obstacles you mention -- that was in the past.
Today, in the right hands, Word can dance on the head of a pin.
Rick


-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Turner [mailto:quills -at- airmail -dot- net] 
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2011 8:32 PM
To: Donna McManus
Cc: Rick_Bishop; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Using Word for book publishing

 Yes, you can indeed use Word to produce final layout for a document. You
can also use Word for large, complex formatted documents. 

In that vein you can also dig the panama canal with 10,000 men using shovels
and no medical support. The end result may be more costly and difficult than
is cost effective. 

Word is not stable with large document files. Word also is challenged if you
need to use multiple level numbering sequences. Word may also exhibit
instability with paragraph and character tag formatting. 

In short, Word was designed to do short uncomplicated documents. Documents
like letters, and other business documents. 

It don't even do XML in an adequate manner should that be a requirement,
because it is inordinately difficult to reference a schema or DTD other than
the one Microsoft embeds in it.

It is ubiquitous in the business world and in computers which makes it
convenient, but not necessarily well or even adequately suited for this type
of use. 

Scott
 


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