Re: Corel Ventura

[John Russell <johnr -at- BRS -dot- COM>]

Hi,

I know I'm hard on Ventura, that's because I've only been working with
documentation tools for about three years.  In that time I've seen some
pretty cool stuff...not much of it from Ventura.

And yes, Ventura will accept any kind of ASCII text file (there's only
one...ASCII is ASCII).  What I meant was fully formatted text
translation.  For instance, Word is pretty good at taking a fully
formatted WP document and making it look almost exactly the same in
Word format.  With Ventura--and with the exception of WP--it has to
be a flat ASCII text file.

WinWord is pretty nice, but there are some quirks.  WW's Master Document
for long documents isn't as smooth as Frame's Book, it's a little slow
because it constantly repaginates.  And importing many graphics *does*
slow it down.  Chapter and heading numbering is quite problematic--I'll
spare you the details, unless you really want to know.  There are
probably a few other things, but those are the three that bother me most.

Frame, though, I believe is a pretty well rounded product.  The only
thing I would miss is Word's macro writing facility.  My department has
taken a similar position, "unless Corel revamps the heating system
and puts in an air conditioner, we're moving out!"


__________________________________________________________________________

> We have always (since Ventura 1.0 -- now *that* was buggy!) used Word
> or Word for Windows text files, though I have imported Ami Pro
> files successfully and someone here is using (ugh) WordPerfect files
> in Ventura, as well. In short, I don't think there's any type of file
> I've tried to put into Ventura that didn't work...

> Now that Microsoft, Frame, and other companies have jumped on the bandwagon,
> spending more money and using newer technology to produce superior
> products, it's easy to knock Ventura. ...

> Anyway, in answer to your question about tools of choice, Gerry, [John] I
> think your opinions reflect those of the marketplace. Frame and
> WinWord are the hottest tools going according to the people I talk
> to. I wish I could use WinWord for our manuals, but I think our
> graphics would make it really slow. Of course, at the moment I'm using
> Ventura, and it crashes every time I try to change the column width
> of a table -- so maybe WinWord is worth trying!! But my feeling is
> that unless Corel does some extremely fancy footwork with Ventura,
> we'll be heading towards Frame in the near future.


--

kjr
johnr -at- lurch -dot- brs -dot- com

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