I understand your points and concern. Word’s performance degrades with imported graphic files —you’ll soon hear your PC desperately grinding in the background trying to swap memory—and the file sizes in Word increase to enormous proportions during graphic imports, beyond all reasonable logic. There was also a requirement to have Warning, Caution and Notes inserted consistent in size and position to the Military specification. FrameMaker is part of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite (TCS), which includes RoboHelp, software that converts FM content to a variety of online help systems, and testing, training, and … In the meantime, take out your red pen and see if you agree. With the transition, several different sized technical publication templates were developed in FrameMaker… This is very expensive and alone can justify the value of purchasing the FrameMaker product. Word changes fonts and pagination unpredictably when you change printer drivers. As a veteran FrameMaker user, she took many of these features for granted. combination of graphic and text formatting. With graphic heavy files, Word will grind to a standstill and not display any graphics towards the final pages, if you get that far. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. My company currently uses several different software applications for different manuals. Here is the URL: http://adobe.ly/Y2sHLY, Enjoy! The team were so excited with their new work environment, and so we asked them the ultimate question – What would you say are the major benefits you have gained from working in the Adobe FrameMaker environment? Balraj Bawa: You can provide different types of indexes and lists, e.g. No other commercial DTP package runs across so many platforms. Clearly, you are an extremely advanced MS Word user and are capable of achieving some great results from that product. Word does not number your tables or your figures. The key was to stringently follow well-designed templates. Microsoft has rudimentary indexing, but nothing near the capability of multiple indexing that FrameMaker has. Never had ‘crash’ problems. (function(d, s, id) { To be more specific: FrameMaker’s quality of typography is better than most DTP packages, and significantly superior to Word. Word doesn’t handle large documents well and begins to have difficulties when it goes over 100 pages of standard text, i.e. I know that with considerable effort, and preparation ahead of time (rarely done in corporate publishing) it is possible to create “sturdy” autonumbers in Word. files double from 2MB to 4MB and continue to double until they reached 64MB. For a beginner in FrameMaker, this feature is confusing because by default the TOCs, LOF, LOTs created are not usable because there is not formatting. Longer answer: There's been a lot of debate about whether Microsoft Word or OpenOffice might be capable replacements for FrameMaker. As a technical writer I wouldn’t want to use anything else but FrameMaker … Short answer: no. Take a look and tell me what you think. Numbering is automatic in MS Word too. Autotext, Autocorrect and the Macro Recorder are very helpful. Word tends to change pagination when you change printer driver, even if the fonts have not changed, ruining indexes and tables of contents. Adobe FrameMaker or MS Word? spellcheck, redo, undo, sort, are not up to Word’s. This list below is their Top 10: For those of us that have been working with FrameMaker for many years, the consistency and robustness in production is something we take for granted yet expect. FrameMaker is more connected to the publishing world, and has very close ties to Adobe’s other technologies, such as the Adobe Type Manager, Postscript and Acrobat PDF. “Professional Technical Writing” Course Wins STC Award. Temporary Word files will eat up your disk space, and sometimes don’t get deleted from the cache. Formatting multiple paragraph number schemes within a document. }(document, "script", "aweber-wjs-rotni73g9")); How to Combine Multiple MS Word 2010 Documents in a Master Document, How to Write a Software Installation Guide, Introduction to Technical Writing | Technical Writing Tutorial, https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/framemaker/whitepapers/FrameMaker_vs_Word_For_Technical_Documentation.pdf, ← Use Parallel Construction in Your Writing, How to Insert Text and Images to a FrameMaker Side Bar (or Side Head), Start Small while Waiting and Searching for that Great Technical Writing Job. All rights reserved. If you have to print large documents in Word… within the same numbering stream, or to have multiple numbering streams. document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); Not designed as a structured document tool, i.e. Running headers and footers using referenced paragraphs, i.e.. Formatting tables using table templates, ensuring that you use a consistent format for each type of table. Possible being phased out by Adobe. However, there is no real bias here, because the author, Tammy Halter, is listing “other people’s” opinion, not her own. Poor support for page layout and/or graphic placement i.e. That means you can’t proof on laser prints, unless your laser writer drivers give you reliable PostScript output on the page size (plus crop marks) that you’ll need for final output. I'll send you a download link for a 12-page Adobe white paper on the advantages of FrameMaker over MS Word. If I could just same to Word and import from Word, I would move back to Framemaker in a heartbeat. We recently assisted a defence customer to transition from MS Word to Adobe FrameMaker 11. Some use Framemaker, but some of us still have to use Word. So, bear with me as I work on the update. Compiling the TOC and indexes for multiple files takes much longer in Word than FrameMaker. Adobe has assembled a collection of documentation software, with FrameMaker central to that strategy. Point 5 – ‘TOC/LOF/LOT’. I don’t know if this still open for comments, but here goes. Eliminate “Necessary”​ and “Unnecessary”​ for Better Communication in Writing, Adobe FrameMaker Autonumbering (1) – An Introduction. I’ve prepared a list of the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. Frame’s cross-platform capabilities are very impressive. cross-referencing other books. Very little deterioration occurs when printing complex documents across a range of printers and operating systems. Word is very good for this, with comments and track changes. Remember, when you import a low-res file format, e.g. This can result in been locked out of your document, as your PC will run out of memory. If you have taken Word as far as it can go, Adobe FrameMaker 11 might be the next step for you!