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Re: [External] Question about a publishing company

Subject: Re: [External] Question about a publishing company
From: Keith Soltys <keith -at- soltys -dot- ca>
To: Tammy Van Boening <tammyvb -at- spectrumwritingllc -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 18:09:32 -0400

At the time I we purchased it, sometime around 2012, they had two versions. One was the full version that could be used to create templates and smart documents with fields that would let users select items from a list, for example. Another version was for people who would create documents from the templates. The full version was about $800 CDN and the more limited version about $300. I don't remember whether there was an annual subscription or if it was a one-time purchase.

I really liked SmartDocs. It was powerful, easy to use, and quite stable (assuming you followed proper Word hygiene).. I could do things with it that were impossible in FrameMaker. It's unfortunate that it was so expensive. I think that if they had brought the price down (say $200 and $50 for the two versions) they could have sold ten times as many copies.

Regards.
Keith


On 2025-09-19 4:17 p.m., Tammy Van Boening wrote:

I used this product as well, and Keith is correct - years ago, it was expensive, so I cannot even imagine what the price would be now. The company that I was working for at the time decided that the cost was too prohibitive even after a demo showing them what writers could do and how efficient we could be even working in Word (and big docs at that), so the budget took a hit even worse when all 4 of us had to add in an extra 20% easily to the bottom line to each of our products so that we could just deal w/ all the cr*p that was inevitable when working with complex technical docs in Word. I would definitely investigate this product for any technical writer condemned to the H*LL of working in Word.

TVB

Tammy Van Boening
Owner/Principal
Spectrum Writing, LLC
Tammyvb at spectrumwritingllc dot com

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+tammyvb=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com <techwr-l-bounces+tammyvb=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> On Behalf Of Keith Soltys
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2025 7:07 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: [External] Question about a publishing company

I'm not the Keith who posted the first message in this thread, but I have successfully used conditional text in Word but I did it using a tool called SmartDocs from 360Software. I was able to create multiple versions of a protocol specification that was more than 300 pages long and quite complex. You can use it for other things, like creating templates for users and managing variables. and text snippets. I was quite happy with it and it made my life a lot easier.

https://www.36software.com/smartdocs/features

It is expensive, or was, when I was working at the Toronto Stock Exchange I've been retired for seven years now so I don't know how the product has changed or what the current pricing is like.

Regards
Keith


On 2025-09-19 8:33 a.m., Diane Pol wrote:
I had started on this 25 years ago and was advised to stop, because I was "reinventing the wheel". I wish I had ignored that advice. Good Luck to you, Keith!


___________________________________________________________


--
--
Keith Soltys
Email: keith -at- soltys -dot- ca - Alternate Email: ksoltys -at- gmail -dot- com
Web: http://www.soltys.ca
Blog: http://coredump3.blogspot.com


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Re: [External] Question about a publishing company: From: Keith Soltys
RE: [External] Question about a publishing company: From: Tammy Van Boening

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