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If this is a one-off, I'd use Word. We use it for documents of 100s of pages all the time. I don't know that you need to use MasterDocs; it seems to still have glitches.
For a number of reasons, we are transitioning to DITA now, but Word has served us well for large documents for decades.
tims
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+timothy -dot- slager=dematic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com <techwr-l-bounces+timothy -dot- slager=dematic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> On Behalf Of Nina Rogers
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2021 8:17 AM
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Subject: Engineering Textbook: Word MasterDocs vs FrameMaker vs ... ???
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Good morning, Techwhirlers,
My company has developed an engineering textbook, and Yours Truly is to do all of the editing and formatting. It's a great opportunity for me, but I've never been on a project like this.
There are four authors who have been using Word MasterDocs for the book, and they just sent me the files yesterday. I have not used Word MasterDocs since, oh, 1998 or so. Back then, even though I was an "expert," I still found it very clunky and unpredictable, particularly in the areas of cross-references and indexing.
I would think that Word has improved its capacity to handle large documents (this doc will be about 400 pages), but I don't know. I use Word all the time, but not for things like this. I am wondering if it would be better to put the book into FrameMaker--partly because I know FrameMaker is made for this kind of document, and partly because I use FrameMaker all the time for technical manuals.
I realize these are both older tools and there are probably many newer tools available. I'd be interested in knowing what's out there and may be better for this project, but at the same time I'd like to stick with what I know/what software the company already has.
Any input/advice all of you have would be appreciated. Thanks!
