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Subject:Re: XMetaL, Epic or ??? From:Eric Ray <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com> To:Stepheni Norton <stephenin -at- hotmail -dot- com> Date:Wed, 03 Nov 1999 11:09:54 -0700
Stepheni Norton wrote:
> I have been tasked with deciding the new SW standard for tech writers in the
> company. The main issue is that the 'powers that be' don't want to have to
> put it on everyones desktop ($$$). FrameMaker has been dropped from the
> running just for that reason, so I am currently looking at XMetaL by
> SoftQuad and Epic by ArborText. Has anyone had experience with either of
> these, or can you suggest others to review?
Without knowing what the tech writers are doing, it's pretty hard to
give any kind of substantive answers. That said, your "empowerment"
of deciding the standard seems to be pretty limited and doomed to
failure, as you cannot choose the package that seems to be a consensus
best-of-breed for tech writers, thus are choosing between a brand new
and unproven package (XMetal) and a product I've never heard of
from a company whose SGML tools elicit, er...differing opinions.
So, why is it again that you get to decide the standard, but don't
(based on my own gross generalization) have the option of choosing
the right tool for the job and instead get to pick among lesser
alternatives? This sounds like the same kind of "choice" our daughter
gets when we ask her what she want to eat in the days after
Halloween.
