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Subject:Re: Producing Books From:"Stephen D. Martin" <smartin -at- STORM -dot- CA> Date:Wed, 11 Feb 1998 13:50:04 -0500
Walker, Arlen P wrote:
> > Remember: it is a poor worker who blames the tools.
> Even though (s)he may be entirely correct to do so?
> It's not correct. It's true the choice of the tool can make the job
> easier (or more difficult). But there always remain ways to do a
> quality job with even the most mediocre (or worse) tools. The best
Funnily enough I don't recall quality of the work ever having come into
question.
Gina asked whether PageMaker or FrameMaker might be a "must have".
Christopher responded to the effect that Word was just spiffy keen, and
all those people whining about it were just trying to blame Word for
thier own shortcomings.
Whether or not a quality job is possible with Word, or PageMaker, or
FrameMaker is moot, we can take it for granted that with enough time and
effort it is possible. The more important question is: If you can do
the job in five hours using FrameMaker, or in five - ten hours using
Word, which would you choose?
Given my experience on the last four jobs I did (two major manuals, one
chapter updating that turned into a creatign a whole new manual, and a
minor manual editing job), I could have gotten the same work done with a
lot less headaches and in a lot less time by using something other than
Word (or less buggy versions).
Personally, if you want to use Microsloth products, I'd stick with
Office95 for now, and possibly jump straight to Office 98. There are a
host of other packages out there and for anybody to reject perfectly
valid complaints about any particular package is inexcusable.
