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

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> >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. 

Powerful yes, its no more painful than any other DTP package. The main 
thing to remember is it is NOT a word processor. Never try to treat 
it like you would Word - you'll just create headaches later on.

The big plus is that it is very fast to use once you learn it - it 
uses all the emacs keys for starters. If you know emacs you know 
most of Frame! We estimate that for big documents we save about 
15-20% time using Frame over Word.

Also it has a very efficient format control dialog that allows you 
to alter just about everything from a single dialog box.

> If you don't use it heavily and constantly I find almost nothing
> intuitive about it 

Personal tastes I guess, I find it more intuitive than Word.
But then UI used Frame for 3 years before I ever used Word! 
So although I now use Word about twice as often as Frame I 
still prefer Frame.

> to make a collection (all) of the documents fit a certain standard 

Exactly what Frame is strongest at. Its not designed to churn 
out one-off documents. It assumes you maintain multiple books
all in a similar layout, probably sharing chapters across them
(eg concepts chapters over a range of Web tool manuals) and 
publish those documents in multiple formats (postscript, 
XML, HTML, PDF, Hypertext, etc) It also has very strong versioning 
so that you can have the same manual with different sections 
for different versions of the tool (like a #ifdef in C!)

> many of its features are harder to use than other products. 

Not if you compare comparable products 
- like Pagemaker, Quark, Ventura etc.

> standard format but very flexible contents and we found the 
> XML and XSL provided and easier way to store and create the 
> documents

Frame 7 uses XML formatting as standard...

> If you do decide on Framemaker I would also try to take a 
> class 

I'd second that, it is a big conceptual jump from Word etc.
( Although to be honest, the manuals and help pages(written in Frame!)
  are very good - if you take the time to read your way through them!)

Alan g.