RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-19 Thread Diane Gaskill
Word is also a memory hog. It uses more than twice as much RAM as FM at launch and sucks up more as time goes on. It often runs out of memory and sends error messages about no longer letting you undo anything. If you are working in a Word doc over 150 pages or so, you are definitely taking

RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-19 Thread Jon Harvey
I agree with most of what you have said about Word. For large documents, you are often better off using a piece a cardboard and a crayon than having to resort to Word. However, I've found that Word's autonumbering feature works better than most people (including me) have complained about. I used

Re: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-19 Thread Syed Zaeem Hosain
Hi, Diane. Diane Gaskill wrote: Word is also a memory hog. It uses more than twice as much RAM as FM at launch and sucks up more as time goes on. It often runs out of memory and sends error messages about no longer letting you undo anything. If you are working in a Word doc over 150 pages or

RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread Mark Levitt
Hi, Definitely focus on the position and the work. The tools change all the time and learning a particular bit of software is the easy part. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Kelsall Sent: 11 May 2006 16:40 To:

Re: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread John Posada
Position, work, and subject matter. Tools are a snap. Hello everyone, I would like some advice from anyone who has worked in the technical writing field for more than 3 years. My question is this: 15 years John Posada Senior Technical Writer So long and thanks for all the fish.

Re: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread Peter Gold
Hi, Andy: I've been training technical writers on FrameMaker over the past ten years. I just wanted to respond to the popular idea of FrameMaker as having a steep learning curve. It's true that there's a lot the product can do, and a lot to learn about using all the features necessary to do

Re: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread Art Campbell
You're kind of asking a Catch-22 question, Andy, because you should obviously focus on the position and work But most tech writing gigs will specify or require skills with whatever tools the shop uses. So you need to focus on both. I think that you need to have at least a passing familiarty

RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread Jim Light
...would you advise them to seek out positions where they would be using FrameMaker, or would you tell them not to worry so much on which application would be used, but instead focus on the position and the work itself? Mark, Position and work and more important, depending on what you mean.

RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread Bureeda Bruner
Andy wrote: If you knew someone who was looking to enter the technical writing field at this time would you advise them to seek out positions where they would be using FrameMaker, or would you tell them not to worry so much on which application would be used, but instead focus on the position

RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread Mark Forseth
Having been a manual laborer for about 15 years, I've come to appreciate FM. Word gets better with each new release, but still loses its mind when the auto-numbering schemes get complex (auto-numbered chapters and headings, steps, figures, tables, etc.). word is also limited in the

RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread HSC Italian
I've been a technical writer for 15+ years. To answer your question: If you knew someone who was looking to enter the technical writing field at this time, would you advise them to seek out positions where they would be using FrameMaker, or would you tell them not to worry so much on which

RE: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word?

2006-05-11 Thread Joe Malin
Hi! I don't think that this advice is useful only for New Zealand... Knowing FM will help you get your foot in the door. In the Silicon Valley, demand for tech writers is ramping up. My years of experience suggest to me that tech writing departments will now be *desperate* for writers. They'll