Oh, I agree... that flaw was the point I referenced obliquely (perhaps too obliquely! <g>) in my initial post as the reason I almost did not post the article. It would not have been ethical to simplay have redacted any reference to the original author's suggestion --though I was tempted. <smile>
I also think this horse (topic) can be considered on the express route to the glue factory. Grant -----Original Message----- From: Diane Gaskill [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 4:28 PM To: framers at FrameUsers.com Cc: Grant Hogarth; Steve Rickaby Subject: RE: Word & Long Docs (WAS re: Career advice-- focus on FM or Word?) Grant, all, What Steve said is unfortunately true. We tried it and it simply does not work correctly. Reporting it to MS several times did not result in any fixes. Yes, they knew about it. No, they did not know when it would be fixed. And I add, "if ever." Perhaps the information below will explain why. A few years ago, I managed a tech pubs department at a company in Palo Alto, CA. We had a remote office in Redmond, WA, about half a mile from the MS headquarters. I hired two writers who had previously worked for MS. During the interviews, I mentioned that we used FM and they would need to learn it. They responded that they already knew FM because they used it at MS. Yes, you read that correctly. MS was using FM, not Word, to produce large documents. Now, however, I understand from a long-time member of this list who just joined MS, that they are using a home-grown XML-based authoring tool. Based on that, I assume that MS is still not using Word for long docs. I expect that the product managers at MS are fully aware of Word's limitations and know that the Word user community is too. Unfortunately, there are many VPs who do not know this and attempt to force their people to use Word for everything. Only when major deadlines are missed because the docs cannot be stabilized, do they begin to realize that Word is not the be-all, end-all, and it is not really "free" after all. Diane =================== -----Original Message----- From: Steve Rickaby Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 10:40 AM To: framers at FrameUsers.com Cc: Grant Hogarth Subject: RE: Word & Long Docs (WAS re: Career advice-- focus on FM or Word?) At 08:34 -0600 19/5/06, Grant Hogarth wrote: >3. Use a Master Document Afaik it is universally agreed in the Word community that master documents are irretrievably broken -- Steve
