Word & Master (of disaster) docs....

[Grant Hogarth]

Oh, I agree... that flaw was the point I referenced obliquely (perhaps
too obliquely! <g>) in my initial post as the reason I almost did not
post the article.  It would not have been ethical to simplay have
redacted any reference to the original author's suggestion --though I
was tempted. <smile>

I also think this horse (topic) can be considered on the express route
to the glue factory.
Grant

-----Original Message-----
From: Diane Gaskill [mailto:dgcaller at earthlink.net] 
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 4:28 PM
To: framers at FrameUsers.com
Cc: Grant Hogarth; Steve Rickaby
Subject: RE: Word & Long Docs (WAS re: Career advice-- focus on FM or
Word?)

Grant, all,

What Steve said is unfortunately true.  We tried it and it simply does
not work correctly. Reporting it to MS several times did not result in
any fixes.  Yes, they knew about it.  No, they did not know when it
would be fixed.  And I add, "if ever."  Perhaps the information below
will explain why.

A few years ago, I managed a tech pubs department at a company in Palo
Alto, CA. We had a remote office in Redmond, WA, about half a mile from
the MS headquarters.  I hired two writers who had previously worked for
MS.  During the interviews, I mentioned that we used FM and they would
need to learn it.
They responded that they already knew FM because they used it at MS.

Yes, you read that correctly.  MS was using FM, not Word, to produce
large documents.  Now, however, I understand from a long-time member of
this list who just joined MS, that they are using a home-grown XML-based
authoring tool.  Based on that, I assume that MS is still not using Word
for long docs.  I expect that the product managers at MS are fully aware
of Word's limitations and know that the Word user community is too.
Unfortunately, there are many VPs who do not know this and attempt to
force their people to use Word for everything.  Only when major
deadlines are missed because the docs cannot be stabilized, do they
begin to realize that Word is not the be-all, end-all, and it is not
really "free" after all.

Diane

===================

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Rickaby
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 10:40 AM
To: framers at FrameUsers.com
Cc: Grant Hogarth
Subject: RE: Word & Long Docs (WAS re: Career advice-- focus on FM or
Word?)


At 08:34 -0600 19/5/06, Grant Hogarth wrote:

>3.	Use a Master Document

Afaik it is universally agreed in the Word community that master
documents are irretrievably broken

--
Steve