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> How can there be two so divergent views about this application?
<snip>
> If Frame is _it_ for technical writing, how could these
> conditions exist?
> Perhaps it's a regional thing? Are there more people using Frame in,
> say, California than there are in say the midwest or Canada?
> Where are you? Do you and your colleagues use Frame as the main tool?
I've been doing tech writing and programming in Silicon Valley since
1968, and I have some familiarity with what skills various shops want
their writers to have. Granted, there are those who feel that Frame is
THE package, and all others are beneath them (for a variety of
reasons). There are others who point to other programs with great
vehemence and some statistics.
We feel that, if you've learned one word processing package you've
learned about 80% of them all. Because Word is so pervasive, we use it
as a de facto standard, but we keep versions of Frame around in case a
client insists on it, or if the project is big enough to require the
kind of multi-file features Frame has. We have yet to have a client
request Interleaf files.
While lots of folks may want to take potshots at Microsoft, I remember
the spreadsheet feature wars a couple of years ago, and how Microsoft's
Excel kept matching and beating Lotus on a feature-by-feature basis with
its periodic updates. I suspect that we're about to see a similar
feature war in the word processor arena.
