Re: Long Technical Documents

[Steve Fouts <sfouts -at- ELLISON -dot- SC -dot- TI -dot- COM>]

Somebody said:

|} >Has anybody successfully used Word 6.0 for long technical documents.

Steve Delanghe replied:

|} I know of a 120pp manual with a lot of graphics that Word handled, but
|} took 15 hours to print ...

I think this discussion begs a question or two. If you have a 1200 page
book, lets just say it took you a fairly standard 4 hrs/page at a
fairly standard $30 per hour (any of you retentive types would
like to dispute these numbers go right ahead. Be warned that I can
hit the <D> key faster than you can type. I've got better things to
do.)

You are talking about a ~$150,000 book. The question, then, should
not be, can vi (or your own personal favorite software package) do
it? The question should be, is there some program out there that
is so much better at handling a book this big that it would save me,
say 10%? If so, does it cost less to buy, install, and learn than
the $15,000 and 12 weeks that it saves?

Those are the kinds of questions you should be asking. Of course, that's
just my opinion.

    _______________   _____
   /  ___  __/__\  \ /  / _\    Steve Fouts
  /___ \|  |  ___\  |  /  __\   sfouts -at- ellison -dot- sc -dot- ti -dot- com
 /   /  \  |      \   /      \
/_______/__|_______\_/________\ "But what else would you expect them to say
to defend themselves? They are writers; they are professional liars."
                                        -- Harlan Ellison