Re: Frame -> Word

Subject: Re: Frame -> Word
From: "M. Dannenberg" <midannen -at- SI -dot- BOSCH -dot- DE>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 14:27:06 +0200

Emma Heftman schrieb:

> Dear all
> My company's decided that all internal documentation should be in Word
> format, despite
> the fact that most of our manuals were written in FrameMaker. The
> decision was made because we
> store our documentation in Lotus Notes and the user's must download
> FrameReader to read
> the documentation, whereas with Word they can just click on a document
> and Lotus knows
> how to open Word.
> I'm using FrameMaker 5.1 on Unix and Windows '95 platforms.
> Any-way, I'm the only tech writer here and I've been given the task of
> researching into the
> issue. So here are my questions:
> 1. Without getting into a major war, what functionalities is Word
> lacking?
> In particular:
>

Without getting into a major war either (har, har), for me this would be
a pack-my-bags-and-get-the-hell-out-of-there issue. Changing from Frame
to Word is about the most pointy-haired decision you can think of, the
pain of converting and the loss of functionality and reliability will
outweigh any possible (or imagined) gains.

If it's really just a matter of making the docs available for viewing,
you might suggest converting to PDF. The Acrobat viewer is a very nice
unproblematic piece of software and it's even free. It should be posible
to set up Notes to open it automatically on encountering a PDF file.
Coming to think of it, this might also be possible with FrameReader.

In a very large organisation it may appear to make sense to convert
documents to Word rather than installing a viewer on 10000 PCs. On the
other hand, I'd much rather personally install Acrobat viewer on 10000
machines than convert a large set of docs to Word.


Mike

--
Mike Dannenberg
ETAS GmbH & Co.KG
midannen -at- si -dot- bosch -dot- de

TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send commands
to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/ or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html


Previous by Author: Re: Speaking of Improper Terminology
Next by Author: Response: Analyzing Word Styles
Previous by Thread: Technical Writing Job Opportunity (fwd)
Next by Thread: Re: Frame -> Word


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads