I hope I've found an appropriate forum for this question.
We make basic IO&M manuals in Microsoft Word. These range from 1 to 100 pages, and given the complexity of Word's formatting capability and the size of the documents, can be unproductive and extremely frustrating. Our users are not desktop publishers either - I would describe this as a graphics-laden word processing application. The final output is a PDF file or print copy of the manual (we're not into those fancy hyperlinked digital manuals I've seen in some industries). A feature for handling multiple languages would be nice but not a priority. We need to keep the editing of these documents easy enough that multiple users in the company can be competent to work with these documents.
Instead of Word, here are some options:
- WordPerfect (same capabilities of Word, just 'better')
- Adobe Framemaker (more desktop publishing in nature, more training required)
- Madcap MadPac (seem geared directly toward technical manuals)
- Others?
I welcome your input, as we are not a big organization and we need this to work well.
We make basic IO&M manuals in Microsoft Word. These range from 1 to 100 pages, and given the complexity of Word's formatting capability and the size of the documents, can be unproductive and extremely frustrating. Our users are not desktop publishers either - I would describe this as a graphics-laden word processing application. The final output is a PDF file or print copy of the manual (we're not into those fancy hyperlinked digital manuals I've seen in some industries). A feature for handling multiple languages would be nice but not a priority. We need to keep the editing of these documents easy enough that multiple users in the company can be competent to work with these documents.
Instead of Word, here are some options:
- WordPerfect (same capabilities of Word, just 'better')
- Adobe Framemaker (more desktop publishing in nature, more training required)
- Madcap MadPac (seem geared directly toward technical manuals)
- Others?
I welcome your input, as we are not a big organization and we need this to work well.