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Six months ago I convinced my manager that FrameMaker was the way to go with our in-house documentation. We have some very large manuals (450+ pages) and Word6 master doc feature did not work without much hair pulling. We bought Frame and I put in my request for training. Before it was appoved, my manager changed through reorganization & now I have to rejustify the use of Frame for our docs to my new manager. She has had Word 97 installed on my PC for my review. I have searched the Frame and TECHWR-L archives plus several other sources for FM and Word comparisons. These have been helpful; Word 97 has many of the features I wanted from the Frame program. But does 97 really work? I have converted a Word 6 file to both FM & Word 97 and both look good, but I don't have the time to convert the 450+page doc to check out graphics, TOC's, indexes, etc.
My questions:
1. Does anybody out there currently use Word 97 for large (450+ pages) docs w/ TOC, indexes, cross-references, heavy graphics (1-2 per page) and if yes, how is it working?
I use FM5.5 and Word 97 on WinNT/32mb ram and they both work f(or me) for large documents. FM does somethings better (for me) and W97 does somethings better (for me). Who the target audience is and what form of electronic material THEY prefer makes my decision for me. The only other decision based on mechanics is if I need multiple different indexes, I'll use Frame.
2. How does Word 97 handle autonumbering in steps with several levels: 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.1.1? I know FM does it extremely well.
Word does it well (for me). However, my preference is to not go more than 1.1.1 deep since after that, the numbers become confusing. I'll switch to 1.1.1a, 1.1.1b after that. I rewrite if I need more levels and the above doesn't work.
3. Is there a current Word 97/FrameMaker comparison available? (I have an old comparison between FM & Word 6.)
Sorry, I don't have one.
All help is greatly appreciated. I will summarize the answers for the lists.
