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Subject:Re: Hard Copy Manuals: Who does layout? From:Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 10 Jun 1997 15:43:00 -0700
Kathleen--
What a luxury to have a dedicated graphics group! Most of us no longer
have that luxury, because most companies have discovered that writers
have the minimal graphics talent necessary to do desktop publishing.
Sounds like you have a bit of turf misunderstandings going on. One of
the software developments over the last 5-10 years has been the
incorporation of the template feature in most sturdy word processing
programs. This has meant that an expensive graphics person can design
the page layout templates and the writers can simply load text and
screen shots into it as they develop the chapters. MUCH more efficient
use of talent and time.
This list has discussed (many times) the tradeoffs between Word,
Framemaker, and assorted other packages. Up to a limit, you can use the
template feature in Word and Frame for a lot of the layout features you
can find in Pagemaker. Personally, I've never felt the need to use
Pagemaker for layout of book files because of the capabilities of Word
and Frame, but I can imagine that those limits could be pushed in other
environments.
From our experience, if you know Word you know about 75% or more of
Frame. That should help shoot down the learning curve argument.
Pagemaker is a great design tool for small projects like little
handbooks, brochures, newsletters, etc., but it sucks twinkies and gives
change when it tries to handle large multi-page files. And that should
shoot down the idea of using it as the eventual repository for book
files. Finally, any project planning effort should reveal that the more
steps there are between the writer and production, the longer the
project will take (and the more expensive it will be). Aside from
variations on "that's the way we've always done it," is there a
particular reason your manager feels the design people should be
involved in the final step before printing?
Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems
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