The Best Alternative to Framemaker
Unknown
As to the best alternative to FM, if there is no good alternative, this explains why the FM 7 update is a sad update. I address this topic in the thread on the sad update, message 58.
Determining the best alternative
As to the substance of this thread, I will first respond to message 3 from Sean.
Comparing feature lists is a start. But I think that personal testimony is crucial concerning how well the features work, how bad the bugs are, and how good the support is. This forum is a place where personal testimony can be obtained.
An evaluative article in a magazine would be helpful, especially if it contains a feature-comparison table, the results of lab tests, and reader survey responses. Is there such an article on FM?
It may be that the best program for my needs is Word, as you suggest, but if there’s a better program, then I’d prefer it because I wish to maximize the efficiency of my work.
Bugs
Now I’ll respond to message 4 from David Kinyon.
David says that it is a no-brainer that FM beats Word in minimizing bugs.
I do know that Word has some annoying bugs, which is the reason I’m looking for another program. However, according to Tim Murray in message 37 in the sad update thread, Lockheed Martin switched hundreds of users from FM to Word due to bugs in FM. David and Tim followed up in messages 53, 55, and 57.
I don’t use FM, so I can’t draw on personal experience as to its bugs, but in light of Tim Murray’s account, the issue of which program minimizes bugs is not obvious and, hence, is worth serious consideration. The personal testimony of people who are highly familiar with both programs would be the best source of relevant information. I would be pleased to hear from such people. It would be most helpful to hear about specific bugs, or types of bugs, that affect people’s work in a given version of the program. David addressed this issue in general terms in messages 53, 54, and 57 in the sad update thread.
This discussion has stimulated me to start a catalog of Word 2000 bugs that annoy me. I have two categories of bugs: Content Bugs and Nuisance Bugs. A content bug is one that prevents me from obtaining the content that I want, implying that I have discovered no reasonable workaround. A nuisance bug is any other bug.
I think it would be instructive to compare content bugs, nuisance bugs, and features among FM, Pagemaker, Ventura, and Word — specified by version, of course. Are there any other programs that are worth considering? What does Microsoft Publisher do?
I wonder if Adobe, Microsoft, or Corel has an online list of all known bugs for any given version of a program of interest.
Steve Solo
AuthorIT - a new player on the block appears to be a possible contender. It uses MS WOrd in its work flow, but only as an output medium to generate PDF, thus does not encounter any of the problems that you would expect to come up against if you are creating a long document from scratch in MS Word.
I am looking at AuthorIT very closely as an alternative for FM/WWP as a single sourcing solution. However, if FM/RoboHelp where to come a lot closer then this would definitely get my vote.
My 0.02
Cheers
Steve
Sean
Sean
Arnis Gubins
I think you're doing yourself a disservice by just considering
marketing material features lists and selective comments about the
tools. Since you say that you haven't used FM, then most of your
conclusions are highly speculative at the minimum.
You have to realize that FM is a page-layout tool that can also be
used as a writing tool. What that means is that you can take your Word
documents and then use FM to do the final publishing. You may be
satisfied with the quality of the final output from Word, but if you
want a more polished product, then you'll quickly feel the pain in the
Word environment.
Since you like hearing personal experiences, I once had to do an 800
page book in Word due to a client's stubbornness - I know full well
the problems of maintaining cross-refs, indices, numbered lists,
graphics, page reflows, Master Documents, etc. The next version (2
volumes, closer to 1100 pages), I did in FM in less than one-eighth
the original time and this included setting up all templates, tags and
layouts from scratch.
If you're comfortable doing your job with a swiss-army knife approach
with your tools, then perhaps Word is best for your workflow and style
of working. I need reliable, robust and precise tools for my workflow,
so I use FM. I've looked at alternatives, but keep coming back to FM,
since nothing else (so far) works quite as well.
Tim Murray
> update thread, Lockheed Martin switched hundreds of users
> from FM to Word due to bugs in FM.
I need to point out that the two issues that bothered Lockheed did have
workarounds. I continued the project in Frame, using the workarounds, but
did not know of what was going on in the other departments and I didn't even
find out about the impact until nearly a year later. Also, I was not high
enough on the ladder -- I was a lowly outside contractor -- to have any
influence anyway.
Fredrik Folkeryd
In addition to what Arnis says (#11), thoughts with which I completely agree, I would argue that the choice of tool has impact on efficiency even beyond any battling of "bugs" (incidentally, in order not to devalue the word I would prefer reserving "bug" for programming errors that cause the application to malfunction; to label functional deficiency or merely cumbersome solutions as "bugs" seems to be a linguistic short-cut that can only lead to misunderstanding).
The impact I'm thinking about is the approach to text production. When working in Word, the user will be exposed to a plethora of possibilities, with little (true) guidance as to the best choice. It's usually very easy to do things in Word, so easy you're actually tempted to do them without really thinking about how. This is fine if you're writing a memo, based on a Microsoft template. If you're doing anything else, then the systemic use of overrides in Word will soon have you bend over backwards to fix things. This phenomenon becomes especially apparent when several authors are involved or when the document(s) need to be moved to other systems.
We have a client who was delayed in moving to a SGML-based environment, which led to us having to translate then edit (and then fix!) several thousands of pages in Word. We have several other clients who have listened too closely to the song from Microsoft and chosen similar work-flows.
The major difference between FM and Word from my point of view is that the former stimulates an ordered and structured approach to text production. Everything (almost) you can do to affect the document is accounted for and readily available (typically only in one place); further the documents are close to self-sufficient.
In Word, on the other hand, there are more ways to do things, closer interaction with other programs and less transparency ("ordinary" users shouldn't have to bother with the intricate detail). Trouble is, even when you don't know you're making a decision, you are, and in Word you're doing it all the time. Thus, you may not realize that the formatting of numbered lists is dependent on the "Normal" template of the local Office installation. You may not realize that inserting images in a document defaults to copying the image as a Word image into the document (rather than linking it) causing the document to grow exponentially (precipitating crashes), not to mention resulting in an image which is low quality and impossible to extract from the document. You may not realize that if you reset paragraph formats and reapply them throughout the document, you will have to go through the document manually to fix all numbered lists because the will be sequentially numbered from start to finish (instead of ten separate 1-2-3's you will have 1 through 30). You may not realize that if you use style references, the document may not display correctly on a localized Word. Never mind everything else that might change if you open the document on another system. Etc, etc, etc. I could go on and on about nifty solutions in Word, that if improperly used can reek havoc at a later stage.
Therefore, in my opinion, the treshold to producing a high-end document in Word (if at all advisable) is much higher than in FM. In other words, to do it right in Word when it comes to long documents (so you don't have to fix things at a later stage), you have to have a seriously thourough understanding of how Word works.
To sum up, if you want to do either of the following, don't use Word:
* Have the document translated
* Produce more than 50 pages of text with any demands at all on the page layout
* Send the document to other people for editing with preserved formatting
* Be constantly but unobtrusively reminded of the benefits of a well-structured document
* Have exact control over the page layout
* Work with multi-chapter books.
There are of course benefits with using Word as well. As with all tools, it is vital to use the right one for the right task; returning to Arnis, I must congratulate him on a very adept metaphore: MS Word -- the Swiss Army knife of publishing.
/Fred
Tim Murray
characteristics are written to the Windows registry, and can't be addressed
using styles.
Thomas Michanek
> multiple undo in the thread on multiple undo, starting with message 20.
> As to the best alternative to FM, if there is no good alternative,
> this explains why the FM 7 update is a sad update. I address this topic
> in the thread on the sad update, message 58.
Please understand that these numeric references are useless to those of
us who read this forum as a normal News group (instead of struggling with
a changing, slow and buggy web interface).
> I wonder if Adobe, Microsoft, or Corel has an online list of all known
> bugs for any given version of a program of interest.
You don't work in the software business, do you? :-)
No company has such a list available for everyone to see, but you can
search "knowledge bases" or "support databases" for specific problems.
--
/Thomas Michanek, FrameMaker/UNIX/MIF expert
mailto:Thomas....@telia.com
http://go.to/framers/