Re: Frame vs. Word

Subject: Re: Frame vs. Word
From: Chris <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:02:22 +0200

Top ten reasons to use Maker over Word:

1 - You will get to associate with a bunch of religious bigots who think you're interested in their subjective and not-too-helpful opinions/funny little comments.

OUCH!!! OK - please don't flame me too much!

In fact, I'm a Frame Weenie, myself. My reasons - not in particular order, and probably not 10 of them:

Predictable results - Maker doesn't try to do things for me, so it doesn't surprise me with it's guess at what I want. Also, it seems to be more solid in terms of data integrity all around. I have a heck of a time figuring out what Word will do next.

Books - Master Documents in Word are broken, according to the Word community. A Maker book is a collection of document files, with some rules for handling them as a unit - numbering, blank left-pages, etc. For long documents, this is quite useful.

Marker interface - People say the FrameMaker interface is hard to learn. However, I have yet to make sense out of Word's bookmarks, and whatever the other equivalents are. In other words, cross-references, index entries, and other meta-data that you store in the document are easier to deal with in Maker.

HTML output - Maker gives you native functionality to manage the HTML output pretty darned well. You can split long docs or books into sub-pages. You can include calls to JavaScript or Java files. It's pretty impressive, and much cheaper than 3rd Party HTML generators. It works for me.

PDF - The PDF output just seems smarter, more compact, better.

Migration to SGML - FrameMaker+SGML is out there if you need it. Think of Maker+SGML as the outlining feature in Word, only absolutely configurable, and able to produce industrial-strength SGML.

Template Design - For me, it just feels more solid and easier to set up. Once the templates are set up, the author can predict how they will behave.

No macros - That means no viruses. I have gotten Word documents from clients that contained viruses. I'm sure the people who sent them were well-meaning. However, as far as I'm concerned Word doesn't have a macro feature either, because I NEVER turn it on. Just call me paranoid.

Oh, I have more reasons, but I don't have the time to spend on it. Go to the FrameUsers web site at
http://www.frameusers.com/
You're bound to find links to some documents that treat this in more detail. Also, all above comments are entirely biased. I am a certified Frame-Weenie, and like all *normal* people, I approach new software with dread - which means I undoubtably *resist* learning Word. (Please - this is a normal and exaustively documented phenomonon, which accounts for the marketing strategy used by MS to flood the market with Word and Windows, among other products... It works, but I got into Maker before Word.)

Cheers, and I hope you make the right decision for your situation.

cud





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