Word vs. Pagemaker?

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Al Brown <<...is wondering whether to consider using Word 97 instead
of PageMaker for our major documents... but the people who broker our
printing don't want us to, for reasons that they aren't too specific
about.>>

Different tools for different purposes. Word is a vastly superior
author's tool; Pagemaker (and Quark and Frame and Ventura and...) is
a vastly superior DTP tool.

Allow me to be specific where your service bureau is being coy. Word
was simply never designed as a DTP program, and has no history of
working with imagesetting devices, particularly for color work. As a
result, it simply doesn't work as well for printing as custom-
designed software like Pagemaker (PM). You can certainly generate
film from Word with a bit of experimentation, but the problems and
gotchas are as yet largely undiscovered, whereas most service bureaus
have long, hard-earned experience with debugging PM files. In a
business where time is money, why would they want to develop the
expertise debugging software that Microsoft can't be bothered to
debug? PM is more versatile and stable, more effective, and a more
solid performer. Word is still known as "MS Weird" for its
idiosyncratic behavior: some people never have a minute's trouble
with it, even for huge documents with tons of graphics; others have
no trouble for a while and then something weird happens; others never
ever do get it to work right. Worse yet, nobody can explain why the
three groups differ in their experience. To me, that's simply
unacceptable in a professional DTP tool.

Case in point: After more than 6 months of trouble-free operation,
yesterday I got a Word97/Win95 file that keeps crashing on me as soon
as I hit the page down key after opening it. (Yes, I'm using SR-1
versions of both pieces of software.) I've tried every trick I can
think of so far: confirmed that I'd turned off fast save and
automatic backups (both were off); used a different template (.dot)
file; worked with the file on several different computers; exported
the file and opened it in PageMaker, then re-imported it into Word;
deleted every .tmp file on my system daily; eliminated all the
graphics; turned off all other software that was running and then
rebooted; opened the file and looked at the .rtf to see if there was
anything overtly weird in there; plus a few other things I've not
listed, including waving a dead chicken over the computer <g>.
Sometimes the file works just fine for a few minutes; other times it
hangs Word (but not Windows) as soon as I hit any key. No rhyme or
reason to what's happening, and I'm certainly open to suggestions.

<<We're being encouraged to do so by our translation agencies, who
claim we'd save on costs>>

That's almost certainly because they're using translation memory
software that runs only in Word, a common situation; the efficiency
of using that software would indeed greatly reduce your costs. I
have no problem with that, but if they're not willing to accept and
translate a file in PM format, or provide you with a good enough Word
file that you can import it into PM, then you need to remind them
about customer service or find another vendor who's willing to work
with you. In any event, it's relatively trivial to export a PM file
into Word format and send the Word file for translation; just do
a little experimentation to figure out how PM's Word export filter
handles different, unlinked "stories" so you don't inadvertently
forget to send them a chapter.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"By God, for a moment there it all made sense!"--Anon.


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