John said:
Hi Jeff:
Thank you, kind sir. And how the hell do you think *I* got here?
Too smart for your own good??
I was just telling one of my workmates today, I was on the team that
selected FrameMaker as the standard technical writing processor for a large
computer manufacturer (very large) way back when.
I cam to this group when it became apparent that Adobe had lost interest and
wasn't going to fix it ...
Which was a shame. It had the makings of sumthin' special
Northern Telecom wouldn't let Adobe quit either from what I
heard. When Interleaf started hiking their licensing costs (it
went up like 60% in one year back around the end of the
millennia) NT spent a bundle converting masses of documentation
into FrameMaker just prior to Frame deciding that they were tired
of that part of the software market. NT did not that that
decision kindly...
OK. Total tangent (the subject DOES say OT). Next time you get
the chance in Framemaker, type in the word "Interleaf" and run
the spell check on it. It will identify it as a misspelled word
and will suggest that it is supposed to be spelled as
"FrameMaker"
I originally got to these groups to vent my spleen at Bill Gates. After a
particularly sulphurous outburst one day, I received a lengthy reply. I
have never been so comprehensively put down! The only thing that was not
called into question was the size of my wedding tackle. I have never seen a
flame like it since.
When I looked down the bottom, it was signed "(e-mail address removed)". I think
it really was from him... I wish I had kept it
Heh! You may have been flamed by a master of the art.
You really don't want to fool around with the Gates of Dell...
I learned everything I know about Microsoft Windows Help Authoring from the
author of the Help Compiler! I learned most of what I know about Word
Numbering from the designer of the feature.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, when you have to
understand how the software for a feature has been IMPLEMENTED in
order to use it for your application, then that is the worst form
of software there is. This is equivalent to what in the software
world is referred to as "implicit coupling" which is one of the
highest (i.e., worst) forms of coupling. You have to know all of
its idiosyncratic behaviors in order to do even simple tasks
reliably.
Kinda like years ago when I used to work on an IBM 4381. You
literally had to know everything about everything in order to
accomplish anything.
That all being said, having both the talents to understand the
guts of the beast and still have the talent and desires to
translate that for others is a distince service that you all provide.
True story! He must have won that argument: it's massively better now
I sure believe you. However, you might be hard pressed to
convince some of my co-workers of that!
And Shauna probably contributed a significant amount as well!
It's like the question "If a tree falls in the forest and there
is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well, in this
case, it is "If Microsoft adds a feature to one of its Office
Applications and they do not document how to use it with all of
it's bizarre quirks, does the feature really exist?"
It truely is the product that people (who know it well) "love to
hate". For all others, they just hate it
