atw: Re: (TOOL WAR WARNING?) Re: Master Documents

Christine Kent:

Just some minor corrections:

(Ah, <sigh> remember the Good Old days of  the odd Hedley / Steve combination?)

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:44:55 +1000,  you wrote:
> not necessarily a good idea to go with Frame, given it is no longer being
> developed.  Unless things have changed since last I knew, Frame is pretty
> much history, so you will have to become an expert on Word at some stage
> anyway - might as well be now.


FrameMaker no longer being developed ?     It was last time I looked. In fact,
I'm currently working with an Adobe beta toolset that gives FrameMaker to DITA
xml (and back) conversion.  Looks like, sounds like, development still going
ahead to me, particularly as the indications are that this facility will be a
feature of Frame version 8.     (And anyone who's had anything to do with Word
and its XML would have to envy the results a mere beta for Frame gives you.)

Needless to say, I think things might have changed, Christine. It's actually
still being developed even if, to the chagrin of some US people, the core 
development
is in India (last I heard).   

Last new version (7.2) actually has Undo. 

Meanwhile, all kinds of interesting and skilled people 
outside of Adobe are putting effort into the DITA development, with Adobe
encouragement.

> Frame is also extraordinarily slow and clunky to work with compared to Word,

No.   Only if you don't know how to use it properly, don't care for true
WYSIWYG editing, don't bother picking up any of the various cheap or free
tools available to work with it,  don't need to do global style changes every
now and then --  or maybe, don't  have LARGE documents to work with which can be
easily handled as components of a larger book (cf Master mode) without
corrupting all your files.   (And yes, numbering works etc..)

I'm currently doing daily edits on a manual which has more than 1000 pages
(don't ask why so big -- that's another story) and about 400 graphics and
Frame handles it without a worry, and without corrupting component files. I
can open the whole document in about 15-20  seconds and start editing it
immediately thereafter.    If you want to see slow and clunky, ask Word to do
the same with half the number of pages.  (You can fit in a coffee break while
it opens.)

On the other hand,  things like DITA (with new improved editors) are looking
very nice.

Current workplace will  probably switch to pure DITA (with Frame as a final
format refiner)  Real Soon Now:   set your formatting options once, your
document structure once, and then edit without worrying about formatting until
you have to polish details at the end.   Convert to all kinds of formats
easily.

Tried Author IT, found it nice. Beats Word, too. Bit expensive in some
configurations, last time I looked.

Looks to me like the days of all richly formatted binary file document editors
are pretty well numbered for everyday editing.   They may still be needed to
get last-minute pagination right (very hard to automate) but if you can do it
in universal translatable  text-based formats,  and just apply styles
automatically, with automatic re-use options etc,   bring on the XML

Those thinking about building large docs out of components can do a lot worse
than start exploring DITA options now.  DITA defines its own "book" combination
processes via simple mapping, and  XML to PDF is looking better and better.


--Peter M
**************************************************
To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to 
austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to 
austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field.

To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field.

To search the austechwriter archives, go to 
www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter

To contact the list administrator, send a message to 
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************

Other related posts: