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Subject:WordPerfect to ANYTHING - long From:Leonie Casey <leonie -dot- casey -at- ASPECT -dot- COM -dot- AU> Date:Thu, 8 Aug 1996 12:41:11 +1000
Hi
This kind of question in all kinds of variations keeps cropping up
on this list - here's another one.
I have a very large manual which is in WordPerfect 5.1 (I
know - I'm a dinosaur). For those of you who know WordPerfect -
it's in parallel column format - which Word doesn't seem to be too
friendly with. It is also heavily laden with graphics.
Well, seeiing that the rest of the world has foolishly abandoned
WordPerfect for DOS in favour of these newfangled WYSIWYG things, it
seems like I have to move my manual to something else - otherwise
there just isn't going to be anyone else who can maintain it.
Word was the first option - but we're talking 35 chapters, of 50 -
100 pages and frankly I can't see Word handling it. If I have to
spend ages to convert it from WP5.1 - I want to GAIN some
functionality.
FrameMaker was my next option - based on the discussions I've been
following on the list. Because I would want it to be an authoring
tool and because I the cross referencing, indexing tools sound like
they are more suited to a document of the size of mine. I figure a
desktop publishing application has to be able to cope with any
formatting I could do in WordPerfect. Is this a rash assumption?
BUT at the user group meeting yesterday, the user's said that if
we're going to change to something else - they'd rather have it
on-line.
The application I am documenting is unix based - but a lot of them
use either Windows or NT and a unix window. I'm thinking maybe
Acrobat - so PDF format - would be the way to go for on-line,
because you seem to be able to get a browser that works on
practically anything.
Finally, the question.
Which option is going to be less work for me? Do either Framemaker
or Acrobat understand anything that WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS can
produce without losing absolutely all my formatting? Should I be
considering some other package altogether?
Thank you for reading this far
Please feel free to reply to me personally at:
leonie.casey.aspect.com.au
Looking forward to hearing from you
Leonie
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