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Subject:Re: Word in 2010 From:"Kevin Amery" <kevindamery -at- gmail -dot- com> Date:Tue, 8 May 2007 10:58:13 -0400
On 5/8/07, Chris Borokowski <athloi -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> Imagine you're a contractor, journeying between
> organizations. There are fifty-four tools out there.
> You will be hired partially on the basis of what tool
> you know. Now imagine the same situation where there
> are four tools available. Do you see what I'm saying?
>
Sure, although I think you're overstating it a bit. For example, there
are lots of HATs out there, but I know a number of freelance TWs who
only work in Robohelp. If a job requires a different tool, they just
don't take / apply for that job.
Doesn't mean that Flare, Doc2Help, AuthorIT, etc. are obligated to
stop selling software....
> I don't consider Microsoft Word to be the right type
> of tool for technical writing, but I'm not anti-Word.
> It does a lot of things quite well, like the whole
> Office suite, and I'd use it immediately before
> picking up some bug-ridden disaster like OpenOffice or
> WordPerfect suite. It is not intended for structured
> document authoring, in my opinion. It is a tool that
> tries to capture the broadest cross-section of all
> those who must type words into a page and save it, and
> so much of its functionality is a compromise.
>
Exactly. I may be misreading, but it seems that the OP WANTS Microsoft
to implement structured writing into Word and have that steam roller
the rest of the tools out there.
My take: if MS did produce a version of Word with variables,
conditions, snippets, etc. it'd probably be the Master Document fiasco
all over again. No thanks....
> I have seen overproliferation of software, and in the
> end, it can be destructive, just as the cross-browser
> problems in web development have become. This is why I
> argued for a middle ground in this case, because while
> I'm not in favor of a Microsoft-only world, I'm also
> not in favor of the chaos the open source and small
> software companies would unleash on the profession
> without some kind of large anchoring force like
> Redmond.
>
> $0.02, spend wisely ;)
>
OSS can certainly produce anarchy (I think that community actually
likes it that way...) but I'd be leary of suggesting that small
software companies should pack it in / refrain from starting up just
because it might give some customers a harder time choosing which
tools to use. In order for a free market to choose, there have to be,
well, choices available....
--
Until next time...
Kevin Amery
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