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

["Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

Indeed, multi-level subheadings are tied firmly into academic writing,  
making the stuff useless for reading. In literary works three levels are  
about all the human mind can process, and that's when we've got something  
like Henry IV Part 2: Act 2 Scene 3. There, the actors present it in a  
nice linear fashion, and we need not worry that we're absent-mindedly  
looking at Act 3 Scene 2 by mistake.

One of the advantages of numbered subheadings is that a bunch of disparate  
authors can write their disparate sections that are all to be scrunched  
together. The blame for the problems in Section 3.4.1.2 can be traced back  
directly to Irving J. Jones. He never bothered to read Section 3.4.1.1,  
from which his contribution is a non-sequitur. But who cares? In academia  
nobody except the thesis advisor reads anything but the abstract anyway.

How does the PhD candidate get someone else to write a section? Easy, it  
happens a lot. I edited a paper for an ESL student who copied the bulk of  
his thesis from articles in Wikipedia. I'll bet his committee never  
noticed.

What the heck happened in Henry the IVth Part 2? I've forgotten. Hold on,  
hold on, maybe it's this:
  Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
  Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come, when you  
do call for them?
No, no. That's Henry IV Part 1.

Even dividing Henry into two parts is more than some minds can bear.

On Wed, 20 Oct 2021 16:29:54 -0400, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote: