Dear Jim, Thanks very much for your clarification. I think you are absolutely right, from what I've learnt about FM so far, for the task in hand it would be much simpler and less costly both in terms of time and cost to stick with MS Word or Publisher. I am certainly going to do this for the foreseeable future, since I have reports to file and deadlines that would be impossible to meet if I am going to be leaning solely on my non-existent FM skills.
However, given that career-wise I seem to be moving more towards documentation services, following my gut instinct and so on I think I should learn a package like FM at my leisure and also get to grips with the associated areas like XML. This, I suspect, will give me a certain appeal to enterprise level clients, and since my work is currently undemanding, it might give me better options and more interesting challenges in the future. My plan is to learn FM and when I've attained a certain level of competence, transfer my current reports to it. I hope by then I will have found other opportunities to exploit it and make some commercial headway. 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. Perhaps I should have drawn attention to this specific requirement to begin with: I've just assumed that FM produces better layout. 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. Again, I am extremely grateful for all the advice that I have received and thank you for your support, it's good to hear from someone who clearly has a lot of experience in this area. Best wishes, Mark Mark Lawrence Director First Read This +44 01865 30 40 52 www.firstreadthis.com -----Original Message----- From: Pinkham, Jim [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 30 May 2007 14:16 To: Mark Lawrence Cc: Shmuel Wolfson Subject: RE: First Time Framer! I have to agree with Shmuel. I've used Word extensively since 1997, Publisher since 1999. Based on what you've described, it would seem that continuing your present process in Word would work just fine. If your variable content is roughly the same size each time and does not affect page flow significantly, you could save one completed Publisher file that you've tweaked and perfected as your template. Then simply empty the story blocks and import the next Word document to flow back into them. Framemaker is a very respectable, useful tool for long, complex technical documentation with lots of variation. I use it daily, and I've come to appreciate it more and more in the year that I've been using it to produce manuals for paper machines that have lots of little vagaries. But, personally, I would not make the investment solely for the task that you've described. Jim ****************************** Jim Pinkham Product Documentation Designer Voith Paper Fiber Systems 2200 N. Roemer Road Appleton, WI 54911-8687 Business: +1 920 731 0769 Ext. 2515 Other Fax: +1 (920) 731-0240 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Shmuel Wolfson Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:04 AM To: Mark Lawrence; Framers Subject: Re: First Time Framer! Out of all the reasons to switch to FM, the layout was never an issue by me. All you have to do is select the correct print driver in the Print dialog box, and view the doc in Print Preview, not Page Layout view. Regards, Shmuel Wolfson Mark Lawrence wrote: > Hi, > > I hope you don't mind me introducing myself to the list and then > asking a question straight away. My name is Mark, I am based in > Oxford, UK, and I write reports that assist pharmaceuticals with their > marketing authorisations - at least that's the interesting part of my job. > > I've been looking at Framemaker for some time now, basically as an > alternative to grappling with changing layouts in Microsoft Word and > Publisher. The bottom line is that I enjoy writing content but I > loathe the fiddling around with layout. The fiddling always seems to > involve > 1) thinking that everything looks ok 2) printing a hardcopy, and then > realising that it doesn't look so good so editing it until my waste > bin is, well, full of waste. > > My first step into Framer-dom (other than watching the Adobe demo and > downloading some whitepapers) was buying a cheap sealed copy of > Framemaker 5.5 in March on Ebay, which I plan to upgrade, either to > 7.2 or 8 (when it's available). The reason I am being so hesitant to > just go out and buy the software and subsribe to every training course > available (other than cashflow) is that I am basically unsure whether > Framemaker will do the job I want it to, hence I will try to describe > what I need as follows in the hope that someone can advise me. > > My job involves producing 40 page reports in Microsoft Word. These > reports are nearly identical. I use the mailmerge feature in Word to > import variables such as the date of the report, the name of the > product on which the report is based, the final score that the product > achieved and so on. These are inserted at the relevant points in the > text using mailmerge. Tables and graphs from an Excel spreadsheetare > are then copied and pasted into the report manually. > > Is this something that I can do better using Framemaker? Please bear > in mind that I am something of a perfectionist and would like to make > my reports look beautiful, but easy to produce. Would listees please > share their experiences in terms of how long it took them to get to > grips with this kind of functionality (I speak of mailmerge type things)? > > I hope I have expressed myself clearly. If there is any further > information I need to provide please let me know. I really appreciate > your attention and look forward to making your acquaintances, > > Best wishes, Mark > > > > > Mark Lawrence > Director > First Read This > +44 01865 30 40 52 > www.firstreadthis.com > _______________________________________________ > > > You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > or visit > http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/sbw%40actcom.com > > Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit > http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. > > _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/jim.pinkham%40voith. com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
