Re: Competing with Word

[Jay Smith <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hedley,

I like your concept, most particularly, the ability to "lock" the tags -- I
would myself readily buy several copies of such a program and give it to my
technical authors.

The only suggestion that I would add is that there should be an easy and
clearly screen-visible way to see where the FrameWriter users did overrides. 
Reason: they might be using overrides because of a lack in the template's tags
-- the "template owner" would want to see where overrides were used so that
they could be implemented back in the template's tags if appropriate.

-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: jay@jaysmith.com

The Press for History(tm), The Press for Education(tm), 
The Press for [Your Industry](tm), The Press for....(tm)
  On-demand printing and binding of hardbound books.
  Minimum run one copy.

P.O. Box 650
Snow Camp, NC  27349  USA

Phone: Int+US+336-376-9991
Toll-Free Phone in US & Canada:
        1-800-447-8267
Fax: Int+US+336-376-6750




Hedley_S_Finger@allegiance.com.au wrote:
> 
> Dal and all:
> 
> >
> >Lately there has been a thread concerning InDesign and Frame and the lack
> of
> >marketing Frame has because of the smaller market which in turn could
> affect
> >the future of FrameMaker. I think everybody knows the two main reasons why
> >more people aren't using Frame, 1. $$$$ 2. perceived steep learning curve
> by
> >non-users. We as a Frame community obviously can't control the first
> reason,
> >but we can influence the second.
> >
> 
> In my efforts to promote FrameMaker I generally tell prospects that the
> development of FM documents proceeds in two phases:
> 
> 1    Difficult phase: developing a template with tags, layout, etc. for a
> particular application, for example, a cookbook, requiring a good deal of
> typographic expertise and familiarity with the FrameMaker way.
> 
> 2    Easy phase: developing the content for the publication using the
> template, requiring only basic word processing skills (plus indexing, etc.
> skills) and familiarity with word processing applications in general.
> 
> I use the notion of designing a customised word-processor for writing
> particular kinds of books.  Given a template, it is actually quite easy to
> teach someone to use FM provided that the para tags, table formats, etc.
> are rich enough to meet the writer's needs.
> 
> Perhaps Adobe marketing could address the problems of '1. $$$$ 2. perceived
> steep learning curve' by releasing FrameWriter, a cheap product at $50 a
> seat which can use templates but not create them, that is, you could
> override a para tag by adding a tab but you could not create a para tag,
> table format, page layout, etc.
> 
> This would appeal to the bean counters who can only see that MS Office
> costs less, fit my model of the design and writing phases, and overcome the
> problem of the cowboys in a writing team that create their own tags and
> formats.
> 
> The book publishing industry, at least in Australia, relies to a large
> extent on short-term freelancers (read 'contractors'). FrameWriter would be
> cheap enough for authors, and freelance copy-editors, indexers, and
> proofreaders to purchase. It would maintain the integrity of a designer's
> template.
> 
> In the book industry at the moment, authors generally submit their
> manuscript in Word, the freelance editor edits it in Word, the freelance
> designers convert the Word files to Quark Xpress and lay out the pages, and
> meanwhile the freelance indexer uses a third-party tool such as MacRex to
> compile the index which is pasted in as a separate file NOT linked to the
> text (I am not making this up).
> 
> The marketing model I propose would make it easier to implement FM into
> this workflow, especially if FrameWriter mimicked Word commands.
> FrameWriter would replace Word and FrameMaker would replace Xpress for
> those books that were not design intensive (after fixing up footnotes and
> citations, of course). FM's superior ability to work with multiple files
> constituting a book would also allow the various parties to work on
> different parts of a book at the same time.
> 
> How about it, John and Chuck?
> 
> Regards,
> Hedley
> 
> ====================================================================
> 
> Hedley Finger
>    User documentation and publishing consultant
>    Adobe(R) Certified Expert, FrameMaker 5.5
> 
> Hand Holding Projects Pty Ltd   ACN 007 418 153
>    28 Regent Street   Burwood VIC 3125   Australia
>    Tel +61 3 9809 1229   Fax +61 3 9809 1326   Mobile +61 412 461 558
>    E-mail <mailto:hfinger@handholding.com.au>

** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@omsys.com **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **