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Subject:RE: Last Hurtle Before Changing To Framemaker From:"Brierley, Sean" <Brierley -at- Quodata -dot- Com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 30 Sep 1999 09:22:04 -0400
Hallo:
I use FrameMaker. I advocate FrameMaker. It sounds like, you should stick
with Word ;?(.
While I am unsure what Brian's scope is, it certainly sounds as though the
engineers at his place do a lot of writing and editing. These "writers" are
used to word, used to unstructured fly-by-night application of styles,
bolding, and everything else that goes with Word, and to change the entire
company to FrameMaker would probably meet with more resistance than just the
cost.
If I were Brian, I could better justify staying with Word. Importing Word
into FrameMaker is a pain, even with MIF2GO/RTF and Filtrix. In addition,
there are the changes to keep track of and update in the FrameMaker document
as they are made to the Word source. Import by reference could work, sure,
but persuading everyone to use Word's flighty styles feature might be as
difficult as making the switch to FrameMaker. I hope Andrew isn't listening,
but the process Brian describes seems to heavily favour MS Word.
I use FrameMaker because it is an excellent long-doc tool. However, I also
use it as another means of keeping developers out of the docs. My review
copies are distributed by PDF. My reviewers do not change any of my source
documents and, pretty much, I have say on whether review comments get
incorporated or not (I feel an evil laugh coming on, Bwahahahahaha). Brian's
situation sounds much different than that, with engineers and developers
getting at least knee deep into the source docs.
Nope, Brian, given what you have said, I'd stick with Word. It's a process
thing. Sorry ;?(.
Good luck.
Sean
sean -at- quodata -dot- com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lief Erickson [SMTP:lerickson -at- mqsoftware -dot- com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 1999 11:37 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Last Hurtle Before Changing To Framemaker
>
> Brian Doonan is switching from Word to FrameMaker and wants to know:
>
> <<I like Framemaker and think it's the best choice for my company.
> However,
> since this decision will effect the entire company I need further
> information. The problem is how to incorporate Framemaker into a work
> place
> where Word has dominated for years. I'm the sole tech writer at my company
> by the way. The engineers are accustomed to creating, adding, etc. to a
> Word document on our network in revision (track changes) mode. I would
> then
> take this same document and produce the finished product from it.>>
>
>
