Jaco Swart wrote:
There are two issues involved in this thread. The first is writing, and the tools that can be used for it. The second issue is publishing, and the tools that can be used.
Writing: Any word processor that you are comfortable with will do, really. If Abi does the job for Wesley, great stuff and way to go.
Publishing: This gets more involved. This is where the completed text gets formated and merged with images and tables - and this goes for books and brochures alike. Quite frankly, the tool does not guarantee the outcome. Its not how well you know your tools that matters, its what the layout designer knows about layout, style, typefaces, formatting, etc etc etc that makes or break the book. If the tool can handle the requirements, great stuff and way to go. While latex is the way to go for a sizeable group, and docbook for a sizeable second group, OpenOffice is the way to go for a third sizeable group (I fall in this group). And a fourth group will find that Scribus fulfils their requirements. In short: Freedom of choice, but is should be based on requirements.
Is there not then a fifth segment, using HTML? Whether writing inhouse and/or CD-distributed technical manuals, or for the web, it works with reasonable layout control & consistency. It can be made to print ok too.
HTML's main advantage is that it's fitted to utilise the (free) publishing technology whose revolutionary potential has been unmatched by anything since the sixteenth century printing press - the Internet itself. Content is thereby supplemented by context, and availability.
Now HTML's not so good for asserting copyright, but isn't that why we are in discussion here?
Long lives Penguin Publishing.
All good.
So write on, Wesley! Happy abi-ing to you, I say :-)
And happy latexing and happy docbooking and so on to the rest,
Jaco
ps: A note on OpenOffice: It has gone a long way to become a viable alternative to Adobe Framemaker. In fact, its implementation of frames is in general more powerfull, but easier to use, than that of the Frame King itself. OOo is not quite there yet: its image importing is buggy, and there are sadly not adequate resources to address all the known issues at this stage. :-(
Rik
