[Tutor] Advice required: Documentation Writing / Sofware Test ing

[Alan Trautman]

>Framemaker

I was an instructor for a series of computer classes whose training manuals
were all written in Framemaker. This is a very powerful and painful program
IMO. 

Two things I would look into prior to deciding to use it; 1. I recommend
deciding how much authoring of maintaining of the document you are going to
do. If you don't use it heavily and constantly I find almost nothing
intuitive about it and the relearning is painful. 2. If you are not trying
to make a collection (all) of the documents fit a certain standard many of
its features are harder to use than other products. I our case all 50+
courses used the same style for manuals and it looked very nicely consistent
and that's why we didn't convert much.

At my new position we have Standard Operating Procedures that have a
standard format but very flexible contents and we found the XML and XSL
provided and easier way to store and create the documents as they didn't
require much relearning about entering the information and a knowledgeable
person could just read the text file and find what they wanted to change if
the editor gave them problems.

If you do decide on Framemaker I would also try to take a class especially
on the template features which make it powerful otherwise as you finish
you'll find there were a lot of shortcuts in there.

Good Luck

Alan