First Time Framer!

[Steve Rickaby]

At 16:07 +0200 30/5/07, Mark Lawrence wrote:

>I think I missed Shmuel's point as he was overtly discussing 'Print
>Preview' and I think my need is somewhat different, so please allow me
>to state it in more detail: what I tend to notice in Word is the poor
>consistency of the texture of justified text.  The 'rivers' (rivers =
>gaps between the words in paragraphs) are never as well adjusted in Word
>as you'd find in a professionally published document.  It sounds
>terribly pernickety I know, but I would migrate from Word for this
>reason alone.

Word does not do typography, it just slams words onto the page.

If you want beautifully laid-out text, you should be looking at InDesign, which contains a multi-line composer and can do smart tricks like optical kerning and overhanging punctuation.

>Perhaps I should have drawn attention to this specific requirement to
>begin with: I've just assumed that FM produces better layout.

Almost anything produces better layout than Word. You can easily do a side-by-side test of the same text in Word and FrameMaker. Be sure to pay attention to hyphenation settings.

Neither application can either detect or eliminate rivers: you have to do that manually.

>I would be very interested in experiences that confirm this or are to the contrary, just as I'm shamelessly interested in the extent to which FM has broadened people's horizons career-wise.

For me, Frame is mission-critical: no more, no less. I don't know about broadening horizons, but if I'd been forced to use Word for everything these past fifteen years, I'd have given up tech authoring long ago.

-- 
Steve