FM help and more: WAS: Numbering Systems for Technical Service Manuals

[Diane Gaskill]

Hi Laura,

When you run into a problem or are trying to learn a new feature and things
(e.g., the help) don't make sense, please send a message to this list.  I
can almost guarantee that you'll have several answers within a few hours, or
at least within 24.  I've been on the list for 14 years and I couldn't
possibly count all the helpful answers I've seen from hundreds of Frameratti
on this list(I even wrote a few of them myself).  Yes, there is a bit of
babble sometimes and once in a while a contentious thread or two :-), but
for the most part the list is here to support Frame users.  From what I've
seen, it does a darn good job.  In my experience the help you get here is
more accurate than the help you get from Adobe, because the members actually
use FM every day to do their jobs.  Many members are loooong time Frame
users who have learned things the hard way and who have run into the
pitfalls and discovered the shortcuts to get things done easily.  They can
tell you about the holes before you fall into them.

BTW, the FM GUI isn't all that difficult to use once you understand how they
set it up.  But I've been using FM since it was a baby and had to learn only
a little bit at a time, as the app grew.  I'm sure it's a lot to digest all
at once.

A comment about the FM help.  I have copies of the FM users guides starting
with 3.2, and I can tell you all for sure that Dan Emory is right.  The
early help (written by Frame Technology, I believe) consisted of two thick
manuals and covered everything.  It was a heckuva lot better than what we
get now, even if it wasn't all on line.  Apparently Adobe thinks that
newbies don't need all that information any more, but I disagree.  I've
helped several coworkers and my staff members learn FM and I can tell you
from my own experience that some of the info I learned in the early manuals
cam in very handy.   dunno if the curent help is quite as bad as
"shovelware" (I never heard the term before and I am falling off my chair
laughing as I write this), but as Yoda would say, "Good it is not."

Diane

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com]On
Behalf Of Laura_J_Kirk at bd.com
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 12:08 PM
To: Framers at frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Numbering Systems for Technical Service Manuals


I'm not familiar with versions of FM help prior to vers. 7, which I am
using. That, I can agree wholeheartedly, sucks.

As a self-taught FM user, it takes hours, literally hours to figure out
some new operation or feature in Framemaker. Operations/features, I might
add, that were pretty much intuitive in Pagemaker or Quark. If you're
going to have a user-hostile interface, at least have some decent
documentation. Most of the hours I spend trying to figure things out are
spent searching forums on the Web.

However, doing decent documentation costs money. Adobe obviously has saved
a lot of money here. I feel as if, if I'm ever going to reach any level of
proficiency with this program, it's going to mean going to a training
class. Now, that's great for independent trainers, not so great for me,
since I'll have to pay for something that IMHO shouldn't be needed. You
should perhaps need training to be a "power user" ... not to just figure
out how to perform common operations.

ljk
_______________________________________________
Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.