RE: InDesign vs. Frame

["Eric Thomas" <ethomas -at- ftdi -dot- com>]

InDesign is friendly to text. In some ways, friendlier than FrameMaker. You
can set up all your paragraph and character styles, tweak all of your
spacing, lay down text frames, master pages, etc.

It just seems to me... and this may just be a gut feeling... that it is
"looser" than FrameMaker. There's a lot of flexibility, by nature, in a
layout program. As of CS2, you can now anchor objects to text (prior to
that, it was a very manual process to synch up graphics and text), so at
least that problem has been solved. Perhaps it is just my impression of the
programs. But, in the back of my mind, I remember a presentation I went to
by an Adobe employee. When he heard I was a technical writer and used
FrameMaker, he used it as an example of using the right tool for the right
job and asked in front of everyone "You wouldn't want to give up FrameMaker
for long documents, would you?"

Maybe I need to look at the possiblities of FrameMaker for long documents.
But as I have to single source for online help, it may be out of the
question. For now.

-Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: Wilhelm, Joel [mailto:jwilhelm -at- athenati -dot- com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 9:59 AM
To: Eric Thomas; TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: InDesign vs. Frame


Thanks Eric. So is InDesign not friendly to text? I don't get what it can't
do that Frame can. Why are long docs bad in InDesign in other words?

Joel

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jwilhelm=athenati -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jwilhelm=athenati -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf
Of Eric Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 10:53 AM
To: 'TECHWR-L'
Subject: RE: InDesign vs. Frame

I use both InDesign and FrameMaker virtually every day. At this point, I
would not even consider long documents in InDesign. Although there are tons
of features that are similar/the same, I have to get in a different mindset
for each program. I don't consider this a bad thing. I have 500+ page
manuals in FrameMaker, and even small technical docs (25-50 pages), I'd
rather do in FrameMaker.

BUT... if anything is graphic intensive, or has even a slight amount of
"irregularity" about it (pictures that I want to wrap text around in a
creative way, lots of colors, etc.), I immediately think InDesign.

Granted, I also create online help from FrameMaker via ePublisher, so I
doubt it would even be an option for me to lay out an entire manual in
InDesign. I did do an 80 page Quick Reference Guide in InDesign, but I
hand-entered the TOC and index because those seemed counter-intuitive to me
in a page layout program. Those things are practically automatic in
FrameMaker.

Your mileage may vary, and I haven't looked at InDesign CS3 yet. So things
may have changed.


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