atw: Re: Master/sub-documents and corruptions.

All I can say is that your "expert" was no expert at all. There are ways of using keyboard shortcuts in Frame - some are standard, and some can be customised. I've been using them for years and they are real time savers. I've been doing some layout in Word recently and it's been a real PITA. Frame's Paragraph and Character Designer dialogues are so much more user-friendly because they stay open. I don't want to start a Frame vs Word war (really, I don't :-) ). I guess it depends on what you're used to. A Frame document can be a bit time consuming to set up, but after that I think it's much easier to use (and more stable) than Word. 

Dave

tpdhome@xxxxxxxxxx wrote, on 1/07/2009 3:32 a.m.:
I would never profess to being anywhere near an expert in FrameMaker, but my limited experience under the tutelage of the (large multi-national) company expert was one of the most frustrating experiences of my working life. There appeared to be no shortcuts for anything. To go from one style to another within the document was a multi-step process that required mouse and keyboard actions. In MSword, I can change from one style to another as I type with simple shortcut keys.
The 30 p/day that I was doing in Word at the same time was actually 37 pages in less than 7 hours, written from scratch using multiple graphics, several different styles, cross references... and the info was extracted from four archive boxes of about 30 largish paper files.
And truly, for the FrameMaker job, it was the constant mouse grabbing, window hopping, pain in the Rs that took the time. Changing from text to bullet and back again was umpteen steps. And tables... don't talk to me about tables.
There's plenty I don't like about Word but, in my limited experience, there's a whole lot more I don't like about Structure FM. Even the conversion to web pages was more arduous than I'd experienced using off-the-shelf MSWord converters. It was probably something to do with my (and my mentor's) lack of knowledge, but a bad time was had by me despite meeting or exceeding their expectations.
I'm not sure where you're coming from the the getting bogged down in details like page breaks. What's that about, then? :) I find judicious use of keep-with-next styles overcomes most pagination issues -- if that's what you mean. 

Cheers,
Terry



I can't speak for FrameMaker but structured docs in
general should mean faster output, not slower, because
you are not bogged down in formatting details like
page breaks and so on while you are writing. And in
the SGML/XML editor I use, only one editing window
is required.

Also, pages-per-day figures are going to vary greatly
with the experience of the operator. People with a
lot of experience can often be remarkably productive
with even the clunkiest software, while people with
no experience usually aren't very productive with
even the slickest software.

-- Janice



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Dave Reynolds                         Phone: (64) (3) 358 1029
Senior Technical Author               Fax: (64) (3) 359 4632
Tait Electronics Ltd                  Email: dave.reynolds@xxxxxxxxxx
PO Box 1645
Christchurch
New Zealand


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