Re: If Bill Gates is such a great philanthropist . . .
If you make careful decisions about what features you use, decide to use
them consistently, and define your templates properly, there is no reason
why you cannot build stable large documents in Word. In other words, to be
successful, you voluntarily decide to plan your document design as carefully
as you would have to if you were using Frame.
At one time I was responsible for editing a Word document that ran to about
3500 pages of structured text with many tables, and it was perfectly stable.
Over the years, I've encountered very credible people who've said much the same thing, so I assume it must be true! Let's assume that if you spend 4 hours setting up a document with Frame, and 4 hours setting it up with Word, that you've covered the same ground by the end of that time period. Say, a chapter files, a book file, TOC, Index, headers, footers, paragraph tags, and character tags (or the Word equivalents).
In Framemaker, by setting up those things, you're using the tool directly as it's intended to be used. Someone coming along after you can pretty well figure out what you've done -- let's assume that this "someone" is a tech writer with, say 15 years' experience and extensive knowledge of the workings of complex technical documents.
In Word . . . are you using it directly as intended, or do you have to create workarounds or bring in outside utilities to achieve a good result? I'm thinking of the autonumbering problem (and the attendant magically appearing tabs and indents), the broken Master Document feature (and the need to cobble together Indexes and TOCs through other means), and undoubtedly other things as well. Can someone coming after you open Word and, by following menu items and the online help, figure out what you've done?
If both Frame and Word can produce a basic document design in the same amount of time, but if one is basically plain-vanilla use of the DTP software and the other isn't, obviously there's still a difference of costs and efficiency in the later life of the document, when other people have to figure out how to maintain it.
I know this may be a huge question, but I'm hoping I've set it out clearly enough to be worth discussing. Jonathan, what say you?
--Nancy
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