FM 12 + RH 11 OR WebWorks ePublisher

[grant at hedgewizard.net]

Hey Keith—
I'm pleased to read that ePub is working for you.  I don't find it a *bad* tool,
just problematic (and every tool has its own problems).

I was reporting on the experience I and the other writers at my current employer
have found; which was that the more local you could make things, the better.
I don't know what my coworkers are using (I'm remote), but I do know that they
are laptops.  I'm running a mid-level i5 Quadcore with 16GB RAM and multiple TB
of disk space.
We have found that what takes me 5 min takes them 60+ min. (1300pp), and about 2
min/45 min (800pp, but more graphics (PNGs).

As for the template/stationery issue, again, I have to go by the problems the
writer who is our dedicated person for that has discussed with me, and the fact
that we are having to run two different versions of ePubExpress because of
licencing issues (and corporate bean counting); and that either the stylesheet
writer will need to keep two separate style sheets in sync, or some writers will
be able to process only some docs (and others, others).

The company is actually working at dropping all copies of FM and WebWorks, and
moving to DITA (SDL+XMetaL).  I will say that the stylesheet issues there are
currently *much* worse than with FM/WWP, mostly because the company has
contracted with some third party to control them.  $$$$$ for any change, so
changes only happen every 6 mo or so. Somebody related to upper management must
have needed work, or had a cousin who did. <grin>


> On March 13, 2014 at 1:39 PM Keith Soltys <keith.soltys at tmx.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>  I’m running WebWorks on a six-year-old quad-core Pentium with 2 GB RAM under
> Windows XP, with my books and projects stored on our network, and have never
> found performance to be a serious issue. Mind you, my largest document is only
> about 300 pages if printed.
> 
> 
> 
>  I don’t think getting stationery or templates set up correctly is any more
> time consuming in WebWorks than it would be in RoboHelp or in the Publish
> module of Frame 12. Most of the work is mapping your document’s styles to the
> proper online format, which is a similar process in all three programs. If you
> have manual customizations (tweaks to CSS or scripts made outside of the GUI),
> it’s true that update releases can cause problems, but recent versions of
> WebWorks make it pretty straightforward to find the source of any problems.
> 
> 
> 
>  Regards
> 
>  Keith
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>      From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
> [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of
> grant at hedgewizard.net
>      Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 10:48 AM
>      To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
>      Subject: Re: FM 12 + RH 11 OR WebWorks ePublisher
> 
> 
> 
>      ePub is quite good at creating PDFs, but there are a couple of caveats:
> 
>      1. It does not work on a remote Citrix desktop.  (I suspect that it might
> have problems with others, but have no experience with them)
> 
>      2. It *really* wants a modern system with lots of RAM (>8GB ) and drive
> space.  It will work on lesser machines, but you might as well go see a movie
> while you are waiting.
> 
> 
> 
>      Finally: It takes quite a while to get the stationery (templates) set up
> correctly, and there are problems with the stationery for one release not
> always working with another release (or update).
> 
> 
> 
>      Grant
> 
> 
>      > On March 12, 2014 at 3:00 PM Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com
>      > <mailto:robert at lauriston.com> > wrote:
>      >
>      > As long as you're evaluating alternatives, you should check out
>      > WebWorks ePublisher. It can use Word, FrameMaker, and/or DITA as
>      > source and the output. I haven't looked at its PDF output since my
>      > source was in FrameMaker, but it kicked RoboHelp 10 to the curb as far
>      > as web help.
>
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