The Great Word vs. Frame
Debate:
Teaching the Old Dogs New Tricks
Boulder Writers Alliance, 1/23/07
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Tonight’s Goal
• It is not really Word vs. Frame, it is Word
AND Frame.
• Most people have Word. Some have
Frame. Few only have Frame.
• Ya can’t work in computers and not have
Microsoft Word (orAll
its material
equivalent) in 2007.
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Is the Most Famous the Best?
• Word’s ubiquity does not make it the BEST
product, only one that must be befriended.
Frame’s scarcity does not make it the
worst product, only one that has to be
learned as if you were on a desert island…
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A Common Situation
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You have been hired by a hot new startup, Desert Island Software.
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YOU are the new Documentation Department.
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Your crotchety boss, who hates documentation, has hired you because:
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a) he knows your friend's aunt from church, and
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b) his board told him he had to have a doc person
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He said you have the budget to buy ONE documentation tool: Microsoft
Word or Adobe FrameMaker. Which tool do you buy and why?
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Frame’s Strengths
• It really allows you to process documents. (You can
create documents that have conditional text, for
example; they act one way for one reason, but then with
a couple of commands you can get them to act a
different way.)
• It can create Books, not just a series of files. You can
easily create Table of Contents and Indices across files
with Frame.
• You can get into a file’s Underwear Drawer – you can
create a .mif file that shows you much of the
underpinnings of a Frame doc. A .mif file is a pure text
version of the Frame doc. If you like command lines, a
.mif file is for you.
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Frame’s Weaknesses
• It is difficult to learn and more difficult to teach how to
dance. (It has a STEEP learning curve. It is a document
processing tool for professional writers, not a word
processing tool for humans.)
• You have to work at generating a quick doc in Frame.
(You have to make 3 decisions before you get to a blank
page; Word opens with one.)
• The last major overhaul of Frame (7.0) was many years
ago; there have been updates since then, but they don’t
address some of the niggly little things that most 2007
software does. “Dinosourish interface”.
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Word’s Strengths
• You can just start typing. (It has an almost flat learning
curve.)
• Everyone uses it. (My kids have used it for homework
since they were in 4th grade.)
• It is much, much easier to use than Frame. (The short
and Full menus option is just one example of ease of
use.)
• It has the Outlining feature. (This has long been my
favorite feature of Word, and one few people use.)
• It allows you to customize menus.
• You can easily create TOCs per doc, both in Outlining
and in the text, if only to keep track of what is going on –
in that document.
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Word’s Weaknesses
• It cannot create TOCs and Indices across files, no matter
what anyone claims. (‘Master Documents’ does not really
work.)
• I generally think Word maxes out at 1 mg files and 500
pages. I have created bigger files than those, but I have
had smaller ones that crashed, too.
• It has a numbering bug that bothers me a lot sometimes.
A lot.
• Bookmarks in PDF do not retain the autonumbering in
headings.
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Why You Might Buy Word
Here are some tricks that I like, and people
from BWA have recommended:
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Use the F4 Key (Ctrl-Y)
Explanation
– Repeat your previous action. Use this tool
ALL THE TIME.
Example
– Change the font size from 12 to 11 point.
Select another item, press F4.
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Format Painter
This tool copies the formatting from one
selected item and allows you to paste only
the formatting onto another selected item.
Example
– 1.
Select a bolded, italicized item.
– 2.
Click on theAll
Format
Painter tool.
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– 3.
Select the item you want to copy the
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format to.
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Paste Special
Allows you paste other elements besides the entire copied
element into Word. Ideal for copying and pasting
material from the Web.
Example
• 1. Copy a paragraph from a Web page.
• 2. In Word, choose File->Paste Special
• 3. Scroll to Unformatted Text, click OK.
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Customize Toolbars
Create a custom Word toolbar that
contains the commands you use most
often.
Example
• My custom toolbar contains commands
like “Format Painter” and “Para Keep
with Next”.
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Unlimited Undo
Word allows multiple undos – not only can you
undo the last command you tried, but back until
the last save.
• Example
• If you bold a paragraph, then center it, then add
a sentence before it, you can undo back to the
bolding. More efficiently, you can copy the new
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sentence, then undoAll
all the
way to the bolding
(Undo does not undo copying) then paste the
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new sentence.
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Outlining
• Word has four view modes: Normal, Web layout,
Print, and Outline. You can look at your
document from any of these views and it does
not change the content.
• Example
• If you use the built-in heading styles, you can
display the entire doc
hierarchically.
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• See example.
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Previous Docs
• “Recently used files”. Go to
Tools/Options/General and expand this
number to 9 (the max)
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Previous Edit/Para Keep with Next
Add the Previous Edit/Para Keep with Next/Go To TOC
button to your custom toolbar:
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1. Click on the Down Arrow next to a Toolbar.
2. Choose Add or Remove Buttons.
3. Click “Customize”.
4. Find the command either by choosing the menu or
choosing “All Commands” from the Categories button.
• 5. Click and drag the command to the menu you want.
• 6. Click “keyboard” to add keyboard shortcuts.
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Why You Might Buy Frame
Here are some tricks that I like, and people
from BWA have recommended:
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Reference Graphics
• Ease of inserting references to graphics files.
• This are not pasted in, but referenced…so if you change
the graphic, Frame figures out all by itself that there is a
new version.
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Lists
• Generating lists. For example, Imported
Graphics, Fonts used
• Frame is much more list-friendly, more
Entire Book-Friendly. TOCs, Indexes
across files are separate files and much
easier to maintain.
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Compatibility w/ PDFs
• Bookmarks in PDF retain the
autonumbering in headings.
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Conditional Text
• Frame allows for true single sourcing.
• Ability to hide all my graphics so I can
build HTML help from the same source
files, but without pictures.
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Linda G’s Frame Class
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Note that Linda Gallagher will be teaching an intro Frame class at Metro
State this spring.
– I'll be teaching a FrameMaker course at Metropolitan State College of Denver
this Spring. This is a hands-on course where you'll get to learn FrameMaker and
create a project with it for credit.
– What: COM 390I Designing Documentation with Adobe FrameMaker
– 2 credit hours, $305.
– No Credit $200 (space available)
– When: Fridays, March 9-April 20 (March 23rd off for spring break)
– 8:30am-12:45pm
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How to Get Help
• Ask on the BWA site
• I seriously doubt you invented a problem
no one has encountered before. Sorry.
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Discussion Notes from Mary H.
Word Pros:
• Detailed Track Changes feature facilitates collaborative writing
and editing (including the ability to globally or selectively accept
or reject suggested changes)
• Extensive table manipulation capabilities, including Convert Text
to Table and Convert Table to Text
• Recordable macros
• Document password protection (query: does Frame have
password protection?)
• Integration with other application software, such as Excel and
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Much better localization feature (easily supports characters sets
from other languages)
Much better internal drawing
tools (can use to do sophisticated
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Frame Pros:
•
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Discussion Notes: from Donna M.
Frame strengths:
• Localization feature very useful
• Good line drawing tool
Word strengths:
• Can lock styles so users are limited to only certain styles.
• Can create an Edit style that lets text you edit stand out. For
example, blue font, italics, outdented.
• You can sort on a style to locate just that style.
• Don't use auto numbering or auto list, but instead us the REF
field plus a macro for numbering. If you send docs to another
user and they disable macros, the doc will still look like you
intended.
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Check out: www.wordannoyances.com,
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