FrameMaker vs WordPerfect

[Frank -dot- Harper -at- ES -dot- ATL -dot- SITA -dot- INT]

Cathy,

As a long time user of FrameMaker, I can state without reservation that it is
fully capable of anything you want to do in the way of desktop publishing. It
is an excellent tool for long documents, but a little weak for newsletters
(where you have several disconnected text columns.)

I routinely create documents in Frame including all graphics (drawn with the FM
tools) using both the Unix and Windows versions.

Frame has an excellect filter package and I have had no problem importing any
other major word processing documents. It will accept the paragraph styles and
use the names from the word processing. However, if the FM template already has
a paragraph style with the same name as in the wp document, it will overwriter
the FM paragraph style. i.e. if the wp document has a body text style named
Bodytext, and the FM template has a paragraph style with the same name
Bodytext, it will change the FM style to the wp style. My suggestion is to
delete all FM styles (both paragraph and character) before you import the wp
document.

ON THE OTHER HAND, you mentioned that the client expects to take the files then
import them into a DTP program.  What program will they be using? If they are
using another DTP program, it is not a good idea to give them FrameMaker files.
You will be wasting your time formatting the FM document. If it is FrameMaker,
I would use FM to do the draft. - Not only will you save time, you will learn a
new product and enhance your skill set - thus making you more marketable.

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H. Frank Harper       | Two rules in life:
Contract Writer       | 1. Don't sweat the small stuff.
hfharper -at- pobox -dot- com    | 2. It's ALL small stuff.
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