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Subject:Outlines and New FrameMaker Docs From:Carolyn_Gillis -at- TVO -dot- ORG Date:Thu, 3 Jul 1997 23:00:41 GMT
Subject: Outlines and New FrameMaker Docs
To:TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU,Internet
Hi,
I'm a former computer programmer, documentation writer, and technical editor.
I subscribe to TECHWR-L because I'm trying to plan a new career after the
death of my former business partner. For business, I became a spreadsheet
designer; and for my own pleasure I wrote complex computer-generated
outlines. I hoped that I could use both skills for technical writing.
Does anyone know where all the great outlining software of the late '80s,
which helped fuel the small-computer industry, has gone? They were called
"thought processors" for a good reason. I would have thought that they would
be vital for creating complex technical documentation.
Most spreadsheet and database software, like Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3,
and many relational database programs got better and better. However, Acta,
More, and ThinkTank, (a real oldie), turned up their toes and went away, or
became the strange things now embedded into Word or ClarisWorks.
FrameMaker's renumbering of pages and paragraphs reminds me of the
functionality of my favorite outliners; but the Adobe rep who gave the
FrameMaker seminar that I attended couldn't tell me how you START a 200-page
FrameMaker doument.
I wanted to begin large documentation projects with an Acta outline, save my
Acta outline in .rtf format, and use FrameMaker to use my .rtf document for
the beginning of a large user manual or documentation. I had hoped that FM5
style sheets would have alowed me to convert my outline headers and text into
Frame's headers, subheaders, and body text. The FM rep didn't seem to think
so. If not, how would it be done?
Gillis
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Carolyn Jane Gillis Member: EAC, CAJ
Secretary-Treasurer Technical Writer/Editor
WHD Concrete Technology Limited Phone: (416) 267-5414
Scarborough, (Metro Toronto), Ontario Carolyn_Gillis -at- tvo -dot- org
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