Re: Q- Word vs. Frame

[Pat Anderson <panderson -at- ALIAS -dot- COM>]

        Reply to:   RE>Q:  Word vs. Frame
Katie Schuler asks about switching to Frame from Word:

By all means, do it!

We had been producing our documentation in Word since 1985. We've now
converted our docs to Frame.

We use page headers as a lookup feature. In Word, this meant that each
chapter had to be divided into (as many as) 16 sections. Updating stuff was
pretty gross.

In Frame, we've set up master pages to use running headers that pull
information from the heading levels on the page. It's done automatically!

We're also going to be taking advantage of the conditional text capabilities
of Frame-some features of our software work slightly differently in
different products--now we can have one file to handle what we previously
had to have in different files (this really cuts down on updating information,
and worries about making the same edits in files that are _almost_
identical).

Because Frame runs cross platform, our developers who use UNIX can share
information much easier with documentation Q we can send it back and forth
between SGI workstations and Macs.

Because we're taking some stuff online, we need Frame--and we can pretest
it using Frame's cabilities for hypertext linking.

Frame has a whole bunch of features for style sheets that are much better
than the paragraph-based stuff in Word.

We send out hard copy documentation in PostScript. In Word, we'd get some
screwball errors. Never had a problem yet (knock on wood) with Frame.

And on, and on, and on--it's also easier to read stuff if you're short-sighted
like I am -- magnification settings.

...pat. anderson
technical writer
Alias Research Inc.
panders -at- alias -dot- com