Re: Framemaker?

[Laura J Valentine <fiend+ -at- CMU -dot- EDU>]

Excerpts from tech: 4-Dec-96 Re: Framemaker? by Keith Anderson -at- TRI -dot- COM
> I think tech writing students should be introduced to Macs, PCs, UNIX,
> Word, FrameMaker, Ventura, and even WinHelp tools. It's unfortunate, but
> most schools don't want to invest in the real-world tools or are so
> involved with their own political battles that departments with the
> resources to help each other will not work together.

This is one of the reasons I think that CMU's program is as good as it
is.  We have a program called CSW (which they've rearranged a bit since
I've taken it), which is required for *all* students.  It introduces
them to Macs, PCs, and UNIX, as well as FrameMaker, PageMaker, Excel,
and Word.  Then, the TW program doesn't let you get away with not
knowing these programs--in the Intro course I had to write a short
manual for either Word 6.0 or PageMaker 5.0.  (I wrote it for Word, in
PageMaker.  Tells you how I feel about working in Word, doesn't it?)


> The reality is that our industry is vast. You never know what you will
> be working on next. That's business. I recently graduated after going to
> school part time for about eight years. If my school was a reflection of
> reality, the entire tech writing industry would be using Mac Classics
> with Word 5 and PageMaker 3. I even had a class two years ago in a room
> using TRS-80s.


*laughs*  Good god.  But it's much better than nothing, which is what
some people end up getting.  :)

--laura




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