Last Hurtle Before Changing To Framemaker

[bdoonan -at- coreco -dot- com]

Hello,

I've been in the process of attempting to change software packages from
Word to Framemaker for some time. I got a promotional copy of Framemaker
and bought an excellent book to teach me its basics. Even though my
conclusion is that Framemaker would be the more desirable program, there
are still important issues to address before I send a report to my
superiors.

Before I start, I would like to apologize if some here feel that this
message should have been sent to the Framemaker list, but I thought that
the opinions of people here would be more objective and less biased.

I like Framemaker and think it's the best choice for my company. However,
since this decision will effect the entire company I need further
information. The problem is how to incorporate Framemaker into a work place
where Word has dominated for years. I'm the sole tech writer at my company
by the way. The engineers are accustomed to creating, adding, etc. to a
Word document on our network in revision (track changes) mode. I would then
take this same document and produce the finished product from it.

Realistically, the engineers do not have the time to learn Framemaker
themselves; therefore, they would still have to work with Word. This means,
as far as I can see, that the best strategy for our particular situation is
for me to take this Word document that the engineers have worked on and
convert it into a Framemaker document, fix all the problems that arise
through the conversion and produce the finished product.

Does this sound like the most productive method for my situation? I can't
be the only one who has ever dealt with this problem; I would like to hear
from people who have dealt with this and their solutions to the awkwardness
of cross platform production of manuals.

Anyway input is appreciated,

Brian