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Re: Rumors of FrameMaker's Death are Untrue, says Adobe
Subject:Re: Rumors of FrameMaker's Death are Untrue, says Adobe From:Melonie Holliman <melonie -dot- holliman -at- TXEXMTA4 -dot- AMD -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 21 May 1999 13:38:42 -0500
> Howdy,
>
> We have had the writing vs. DTP discussion quite a few times so I won't go
>
> into much detail here.
>
> There are two types of tech writers: specialists and generalists. It
> sounds like
> you are the specialist type. Personally, I want to do as many different
> types
> of things as I can. My overall work is better when I have a variety on my
> plate.
>
> Am I as good at writing hardware documents as someone who specializes in
> doing only that? No, probably not. But a specialist could not handle the
> graphics,
> design, formatting, filtering, etc. that I can provide. If this company
> had the money
> and the demand to have a different person fulfilling each of those roles,
> they
> would have a specialist for each. But they don't have either the money or
> the
> demand, so they hired me.
>
> If you want writing only, you can find a job which does that. If you want
> the
> variety, you can find that as well.
>
> Take what you like and leave the rest!
>
> Melonie R. Holliman
> Technical Writer
> CPD Marketing
> Advanced Micro Devices
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Olds [SMTP:Jolds -at- sprynet -dot- com]
>
> One must recall that tools such as Frame and Pagemaker used to be the
> domain of
> the composition dept.. People who excelled in structure and formatting.
> The Technical Writers role is to emphasis the document content. The TW
> is a
> project manger of sorts, who gathers information, interviews subject
> matter
> experts (SMEs), coordinates doc. reviews and art development. In short,
> TWs
> keep doc. development on track and team members on the same page.
>
> The more composition work we become involved in the more all of the above
> suffers.
> Word wins in this example because it is more intuitive!
>
>