Re: Engineering Textbook: Word MasterDocs vs FrameMaker vs ... ???

[Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

If it were a complex Boeing manual, then FM might be the tool of choice.
Otherwise, I think it's yesterday's news.

I see more reqs calling for ppl versed in Word and InDesign. Understand
there is an excellent *InDesign Classroom In a Book* that's easy to follow
and quickly get up to speed. And Adobe offers a free 30-day trial of its
software.

I worked on a complex doc in Word several years back. It was a DOCX, but
kept crashingâlikely because the Word version originated with a several
hundred page PDF. I ended up chunking the work in three DOCX files, thereby
making it manageable. When all was said and done, I then merged the three
resultant PDFs and ran it through a PDF indexing tool.

Chris Morton


On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 2:45 PM Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
wrote:

> The only difficulty I've seen with Framemaker is that sometimes there is
> pushback from part of a team who say, "But all we know is Word. It has to
> stay in Word so we can edit it." Of course if it stays in Word, then
> someone will push it through Master Doc in spite of the warnings from a a
> quarter-century of Bad Experiences. (Jeez, I can hardly believe it's been
> that long. When I first experienced the Master Doc mess I was certain
> that
> it would all get sorted out in a year or two. "Those MS folks are good.
> Shouldn't be any problem to get it working right." Yeah. Right.)
>
> If the doc winds up being maintained in both FM and Word you'll be in
> trouble. Cut it all over to FM and store the Word version in a closet.
> Nailed shut.
>
> To use FM, get all the appropriate people trained in FM, including
> getting
> them equipment that can handle FM editing easily. A few years ago I found
> that a dual-monitor setup was best. Have not used it recently. Try to
> avoid having separate teams fighting over the correct way to do it.
>
> On Wed, 20 Oct 2021 14:26:03 -0400, Nina Rogers <janina -dot- rogers -at- gmail -dot- com>
>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for all of your feedback.
> >
> > Based on what everyone has written, and my feedback from a few friends
> > who
> > are tech writers, it's looking like FrameMaker may be my best bet. Word
> > appears to still be somewhat glitchy when it comes to MasterDocs and
> > large
> > documents, and InDesign is not something I have any experience with, so
> > there would be big learning curve there.
> >
> > I'll add a few more details about the project, and if anyone sees any red
> > flags, I'd appreciate more feedback on that. To keep everyone else from
> > being bored with Word/FrameMaker talk, feel free to email me privately.
> > :)
> >
> > The book will be between 400-500 pages with 16 chapters, each of which
> > currently has between five and ten level-2 subheadings. (As I read
> > through
> > it, I'm seeing a need for L3 and even L4 subheadings.) There are scores
> > of
> > figures, tables, and mathematical equations throughout, all of which are
> > labeled and cross-referenced at least once (and often multiple times) in
> > the book. There is also a lengthy appendix (case studies, included in the
> > page count I gave earlier) and, of course, a TOC and an index. The
> > current
> > version has no table of tables or table of figures, but we may add that
> > because there are so many. If we add more heading levels, we may also
> > have
> > a single-level TOC followed by a more detailed, multi-level TOC. That may
> > not happen, but it's a possibility. So, lots of cross-referencing, math
> > equation text (I see that FrameMaker has a "MathML Equation" feature,
> > which
> > is new to me but looks like what I would use for the equations.
> >
> > I may keep the doc in Word for initial editing purposes (since the head
> > writer may also want to go into it and make revisions), and then more
> it
> > to
> > FrameMaker for both layout and establishing all of the cross-references.
> > The cross-references will be a big job, but it might be better to
> > approach
> > those separately from the editing.
> >
> > Thanks again for your responses. If you have further ideas/input after
> > reading the above, I'm all ears!
> >
> > Nina
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 1:40 PM Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:
> >
> >> My experience has been that Word master docs stumble most on numbered
> >> subheadings, which is something you usually see mostly in procedural
> >> documents. If your cross-references aren't trying to link to things like
> >> "section x.xx, steps y-z" in different sub docs, you'll probably be ok
> >> with Word.
> >>
> >> Gene Kim-Eng
> >>
> >>
> >> On 10/20/2021 5:16 AM, Nina Rogers wrote:
> >> > 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.
> >> >
> >>
> >> --
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> >>
> >>
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