Powerful documentation tool needed

["Brown, Mordechai" <mbrown -at- NDC -dot- CO -dot- IL>]

TOPIC: Documentation Tool, advice solicited

Dear Colleague:

We are a small company that is producing a large documentation set
for our killer client/server product (currently under development).
We had a bad experience with Word6, chiefly, its pitiful masterdocument
"feature", and its inability to handle large files along with its other
infamous shortcomings.

We therefore are soliciting advice re what tool(s) you may have found
useful.

Our hardware is a high-end PC (but might consider a move to the Mac world
given very compelling reasons).

This is a partial wish-list of what we need this tool to do:

1. Handle a doc set of approx. six volumes.
   (Each volume may be anywhere from 100 to 400 pages. Chapters/files
    will average 60 pages.)

2. Deal with numerous screen captures

3. Allow for easy export of text to help compiler

4. Enable sophisticated indexing and TOC generation (single and multiple
   volume) for a large number of files.

5. Provide for auto page-referencing within a volume and referencing pages
   in other volume/other files/books.

6. Make global or partial "style" changes (for a large number of
   files/volumes).

7. Export RTF files (so that we can run them through a Help compiler).

8. Have strong Workgroup features (4-5 "seats'), and a strong Revision
   Tracking feature.

(We currently have no requirements for fancy color processing or image
editing.)

We are considering the following two products:

Ventura. Recently swallowed by Corel Corp. (Now bundled with Draw!
May not be powerful enough for our needs. Text processing features reputed
to be a bit week. Local distributorship. Don't know of too much support
apart from an Internet discussion group. Reputed to be "fragile." Might be
even more so now -- with the integration into Corel Draw.

FrameMaker. Has been in Windows for a few years. Responsive E-mail support
from the company's tech support. A very professional tool.  PC Magazine
Editor's choice.

Your input is especially welcome if you have experience with both of these
products. I used FrameMaker for windows a couple of years ago, and was
favorably impressed. (We were considering Interleaf 6, a very powerful
"enterprise-wide" product, but their Windows port won't be ready until
the Spring. No known distributor/support in Israel. There's an opportunity
here for someone. Very strong filtering and workgroup features.)


Thanks for reading all of this and Happy Hannukkah!!

Amram Hakohen
Cleyal, Ltd.
Jerusalem, Israel
Voice (972) 2-867-097
FAX (972) 2-869-293

Please feel free to post this forward.