Re: Technical Manual Production

[Beth Friedman <bjf -at- WWW -dot- WAVEFRONT -dot- COM>]

In our previous episode, Lars Bradley said:
> At 21:25 15.07.98 -0500, Beth Friedman wrote:
>
> >I've used FrameMaker and Word for Windows.  FrameMaker is easier if
> >you're going to be dealing with a commercial printer or producing
> >PDFs; Word is easier if you have to share files in editable format
> >with the users.
> >
> >For printed materials (as opposed to help files or HTML), anything
> >else runs a far-distant third.
>
> curiosity; why not pagemaker?

It doesn't handle running headers/footers anywhere near as well; it
doesn't have dynamic codes of any sort (AFAIK) except by regenning the
entire document; it has even poorer drawing tools for on-the-fly
graphics than Word or Frame; and the way it handles tables is
incredibly lame.  And worst of all, it doesn't have any way to do
straddle columns -- where a header or callout is on the left side of
the page, and the rest of the text flows with it, but is on the right
side of the page.

I also don't like the basic paradigm wherein you have WYSIWYG mode and
editing mode.  (I don't like vi, either, for much the same reason.)

PageMaker is great for shorter documents where you need total control
over the text, but I would never use it for anything where the text
needs to flow automatically instead of being carefully placed, page by
page.

*********************************************************************
Beth Friedman                                       bjf -at- wavefront -dot- com
"Your eyes are like aquariums," he murmured admiringly.
"Don't you mean -- aquamarines?"
"No -- aquariums.  They're sort of a murky green."