Microsoft Word Versus Adobe FrameMaker For Creating Professional Documents

I use Word and FrameMaker to write creatively about technology. Both tools can produce professional documents but they each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Word is:

• Easy to learn
• Not as expensive as most desktop publishing tools
• Bundled with other applications such as PowerPoint, Excel and Access
• Good for simple documents where there is no complex numbering or formatting
• Great for small documents (less than 50 pages)

However, Word falls down when it comes to producing large documents. I've seen Word literally blow up documents where I had to spend hours rebuilding them from scratch. And, at 12:00 midnight while rushing to meet a major deadline, that is no fun!

There are problems with numbering too - especially with numbered procedures. If you move a numbered procedure to a different section of your document, chances are your procedure numbering will continue from the new previous procedure, and you’ll have to restart the step numbering manually.

FrameMaker has several advantages. I'll name a few:

1. It's 99.9% bulletproof. Case in point: I was producing system documentation for a leading financial company. I had to update documents for 30 subsystems, which each subsystem being a chapter. The documents were complex with numbered headings, procedures, complex graphics and screens, and numerous cross references. Near the end of the contract, my coworker and I noticed that FrameMaker was taking a few minutes to generate the table of contents. To our surprise, we discovered the document totaled 1400 pages! I had only a few months to produce all these documents, so you can imagine I was working at top speed and multitasking like crazy - and FrameMaker crashed only once.
2. You can create multiple versions of a document quickly and easily. For example, with FrameMaker’s conditional text feature, you can single source printed documents for different audiences.
3. Cross referencing is very versatile. You can cross reference within your document and across documents. And, you can customize the cross reference formatting to include the chapter number and quotation marks, and include text before the page number. For example, your cross reference can say: See Chapter 1, "Introduction" on page 10.
4. You can use variables to customize complex numbering series. For example, your procedures can have numerical numbering for the main steps and alphabetical numbering for the sub-steps.
5. You can customize and save table formats. For example, you can create a table for your procedures where one column has the step number, and the other column has the action and result.
6. You can put a logo or a graphic in a paragraph style. This is very useful if you need a "hazard" symbol in a warning or an "exclamation mark" in an important note.

FrameMaker 8 has some very powerful new features:

Unicode support. You can produce documents in Russian, Greek, Turkish and other languages that use non-Latin alphabets.

Rich Media support. FrameMaker 8 supports Flash and Acrobat 3D, which makes it possible to produce interactive PDF files where you can include animation and voice over. Now, you can create much more engaging online documentation.

Tracking text changes. Like Word, you can now track text changes easily. And, you can use the History palette to highlight, accept, and reject text changes, and to undo multiple changes.

Dita Support. You can create and distribute topic-oriented information in XML and create DITA maps.

Microsoft Office 2007 support. You can import content created in Word and Excel 2007.

Although FrameMaker is expensive and has a huge learning curve, I vote for FrameMaker hands down because of its robustness and versatility.

Which tool do you prefer to create documents? FrameMaker or Word?

Let me know in the comments…

Comments

[Michele Marques]

Of the two, I prefer Frame. I've experienced Frame crashes, but it does seem more robust than Word.

I disagree, however, about it being complex to learn. I've taught several people to use FrameMaker, and it is quite easy to get started using existing templates in unstructured Frame. I think Word just seems easy because it is so pervasive.

[Giselle Conyette]

Michele,

Thank you for your comment. You made some excellent points. It's always great to hear other points of view.

[Kim]

Hi Giselle - you and I have been chatting via Facebook :)

I absolutely LOVE Frame. I haven't had the opportunity to actually use it in recent years, as most of my contracts had been using Word. I think I may have convinced my new employer to switch to Frame - let's hope.

[Giselle Conyette]

Kim,

Thank you for your comment. I hope you employer does switch to Frame especially if you are working with large documents and want to do single sourcing.

[Anil]

Hi Giselle,

Definately Frame. After long discussions I convinced my client to get all our existing word documents into frame. But I am not sure till what extent I will be successful. If you have any tips and tricks for the same please advise me.

[Giselle Conyette]

Thank you Anil for your comment. I will definitely pass onto you any new tips and tricks I learn.