Re: Ventura Redux

["Barbara J. Philbrick" <burkbrick -at- AOL -dot- COM>]

> How easy is the transition to Frame for a
> VP user? What other considerations should I be looking at?

I learned FrameMaker last year after using Ventura for about 5 years. The
transition was not simple - I took two weeks off my regular contracting work
to learn it, and I still don't feel like an expert. I kept a list of things
that didn't work properly (or what I felt was proper) - here's a synopsis:

1. It's a pain to make headers cross columns in multicolumn documents. Oh how
I wanted my paragraph "columnwidth"/"framewidth" command from Ventura!

2. Fonts get messed up when I use WinFax as the printer; Ventura's no picnic
with different fonts either, so this is probably a wash.

3. I still haven't figured out how to modify the automatically generated
stuff (list of tables, list of figures, table of contents) so that the title
appears automatically. However, Frame _does_ generate these lists separately,
which is a nice change from Ventura.

4. File lookup takes a while to get used to - I'm a DOS/Windows person, and I
think Frame is using Unix standards; directory names appear after the file
names.

5. Frame uses Word/Pagemaker standards for templates - each document has a
separate stylesheet/template. This is difficult for me to get used to;
usually I'm making changes that should affect all of the documents using the
stylesheet.

6. You can't put negative numbers in the indent fields, as you can with
Ventura. Therefor, with a document that has headings that use hanging
indents, you have to set all the various types of body text to the indent you
want, with hangers at 0 (or wherever).

7. Spell checker needs some work - it doesn't have an obvious skip option.
For instance, occasionally I have two words in a row that need to be that
way, and you have to select Continue (if I remember correctly) to skip it.

8. Frame uses reference and master pages, which are OK, but take some getting
used to. However, they also have a reference pages feature, but it didn't
work as I expected it to - I couldn't put drawings I was using throughout the
document in this.

9. I miss being able to work on my files in a word processor. When you start
putting a lot of drawings and tables in, Frame gets cumbersome to move around
in.

10. The only way to get macros is to use the Windows macro recorder, which
basically sucks.

11. Get a large monitor! The find/change window will take up about 1/3 of
your screen (almost always obscuring the text you are trying to find). I've
got a 20" monitor, which is a huge improvement.

12. You can't do automatic captioning of drawings.

13. Fractions are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve (to paraphrase
from Lyle Lovett). You have to "microposition" numbers to get them into
fraction form.

Although this might not sound like it, Frame _is_ a good product. It does
many things beautifully - esp. cross referencing. I also like having a book
open (Frame's name for a publication) and being able to choose files from it
instead of the file menu. You can also have many documents open at one time.

My experiences with Frame right now are limited to version 3.0; I've got 4.0,
but when I installed it, I only had 8M of RAM, and it was horrendously slow,
so I didn't play with it much. Hopefully they've fixed some of the
limitations in 4.0, but I won't be working on it until I have time to learn
the changes.

> Does anyone out there have experience converting from Ventura
> to Frame? Does Frame Windows version provide a filter to
> import VP-Win files?

Yes, it does provide a filter, but your text files have to be in ASCII format
to convert them. This isn't a horrible thing, but I haven't tried a full
document yet. I don't remember how it did with graphics; I think not well,
but I'd have to try again and see. BTW, 3.0 didn't come with the filter; you
had to request it separately. 4.0 does come with the Ventura filter.

Sorry I got a little long-winded here, but I hope this helps you!

Barb Philbrick