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Subject:RE: what should I say? From:"Giordano, Connie" <Connie -dot- Giordano -at- FMR -dot- COM> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 5 Sep 2002 13:56:08 -0400
Susan,
Sean's right it's not the best tool, and I'd approach it honestly and
diplomatically... "this can be a difficult tool to use for this kind of
output, I'd recommend such and such to do this part of the job." However,
if that's the only tool you have access to, you could be stuck. I don't
think a recommendation would offend the marketing guy or the graphics
designer, you're trying to make the project work for everyone. Save them
some heartache too, and maybe introduce them to a new tool... everybody
wins.
Good luck
Connie Giordano
Who now must live in constant fear of quantum annihilation since I AM a tech
writer and a marketing writer :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan W. Gallagher [mailto:sgallagher5 -at- cox -dot- net]
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 1:06 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: what should I say?
Y'know, I'd much rather get dressed up, fight traffic,
and go sit in a meeting, secure in the knowledge that
tech writing and marketing writing were matter and anti-
matter and should never really agree on anything. Be
that as it may, yesterday I couldn't spell contractor, ...
<g> ...and contractors make strange bedfellows, or sumthin'
like that.
I've got this new client. He hired the marketing guy
and the marketing guy found me. The marketing guy
could recommend me to more of his clients, so it's
pro'lly not a good idea to cause harm to the marketing
guy.
The marketing guy has a graphics/layout person. I haven't
seen her work, but it doesn't much matter from my end
right now. However, in talking to her about logos and
stuff, I find out that she and marketing guy are planning
to pull the manual into Quark on a PC for final release
to print. I don't know if she's done tech manuals in Quark
before.
I'm thinking single-source paper, pdf, and html and idunno
how this is going to work from Quark. Everything I've heard
(and from what I remember from one nightmare job back in the
early 90s) says that Quark is not a good choice for manuals --
even relatively small ones (under 100 pages each).
So, what I'm asking is, is this Quark solution going to work?
And if nobody thinks it will, should I say something, even at
the risk of hurting my relationship with the marketing guy, to
save the client some heartache and hard-earned cash???
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