Re: Recommended software for breaking into technical writing

[Howard Billington <hb -at- PENCIL -dot- U-NET -dot- COM>]

Kathleen Frost wrote:

>2.      Pagemaker, Quark, or Framemaker
>((I have been in tech writing for 14+ years and never worked anywhere that
>used these applications.  I don't know what they might be able to do that
MS
>Word can't do but I have been producing all kinds of documentation from
>technical documents to end user operations in Word without any problems.

What they do is enable pages to be laid out, designed, rather than simply
generated with limitations. The difference is, admittedly, a subtle one
and, perhaps, simply a technicality. I like the level of visual control
afforded.

MS-Publisher works in a very similar way to QuarkXPress. To me this hints
that Microsoft themselves recognise the 'Word CAN do it' attitude is
sometimes carried to the extremities and complexities of work-around one
encounters when trying to use, say, a small stone as a control-cable anchor
or a piece of folded cardboard and some sticky tape to latch a
cassette-player door shut...

PageMaker is founded on the same philosophy of page layout but takes a
different visual approach.

FrameMaker I've unfortunately not been able to play on - this is something
that definitely cost me the possibility of tendering for a contract and
arguably also cost me a substantial amount of follow-up work about a year
ago. No joke there.

Chuck Interleaf onto the list for the rather comprehensive document
management  tools it contains, like fantastic revision-tracking, as well as
it being a joy to both learn and work with and there are quite a few
worthwhile applications around.

Admittedly I haven't found the market saturated with requirements for
top-end DTP operation but how much of this is a tacit reflection of the
view that 'writers write' and  how much of it perpetuated by a dim
awareness that most of us seem to be able to use Word whether we like it or
not I'm in no position to comment.

I'm also a Word fan btw - I've used many versions across PC and Mac
platforms without problem, once I've familiarised myself with its
fine-tunings on *that* particular machine and spent a day or so customising
it to my preferences - I just accept its limitations and don't see why I
should go out of my way with Word workarounds when it isn't the best tool
for a given job. Again this is qualified by the fact I'm quietly proud of
the workarounds I have had to devise in Word and other processing s/w.

Howard Billington, BA Technical Communication
--
mailto:hb -at- pencil -dot- u-net -dot- com
http://www.pencil.u-net.com

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