Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4343 mails)

[KMcLauchlan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anders Johansson [mailto:andjoh@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 9:52 AM
[...]
> 
> On Friday 15 November 2002 15.44, KMcLauchlan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > I've been trying to work around OOo's lack of capability
> > (compared to FrameMaker)
> 
> I've seen you mention this a couple of times, and I have to 
> say I'm a bit 
> befuddled about it. I freely admit I've never used 
> FrameMaker, but from what 
> I've read on the net it's more a Desktop Publishing program 
> than straight 
> word processor. MS Word doesn't compete with FrameMaker, and 
> OO Writer is a 
> Word competitor.

> for desktop publishing you should probably look at TeX, LaTeX 
> and the various 
> tools associated with it 

Couple of things:

1) OOo does use the "frame" model and is potentially more 
   useful as a FrameMaker substitute than Word. That is, 
   OOo was designed by people who have used FM and other 
   tools and who recognized what's good about FM...even 
   if they couldn't incorporate it all...

2) I'm the only FM user at our company -- everybody else 
   uses Word, and they are annoyed that my docs are not 
   readable/editable in the "standard" tool.

3) If/when we switch to Linux, I'd love to keep FM, but Adobe 
   has said that there's no business case for porting it.
   So, given that I would need to switch to something, 
   and that the rest of the company would need to switch 
   to something, then it would be best if we all switched 
   to the same app -- if it'll do the job.

FM is actually a strange bird. It is DTP, but not in the 
usual flashy, fine-typographical-control mode of Quark 
and other programs that you'd use for magazines and marketing 
literature.  Rather, it could be considered a word processor 
for people who are serious about doing documents. It's more 
stable and solid than Word. It has better features for doing 
the kinds of things that you do in long, complex documents 
with lots of cross-references, variables, conditions, etc.

My point was that OOo has a great deal of the potential for 
being a "FrameMaker-Lite", and I could probably get it to do 
what I need, even if I had to bend it a bit to get some 
of the stuff that FM does more naturally... but I keep wasting 
so much of my Linux time on broken stuff that I never get 
to spend concentrated time with OOo.

I suppose that I *could* just switch to Red Hat and then 
I could get to the tool, rather than endlessly futzing 
with the infrastructure...  It might make my IT people 
happier, too.   I just really, really hate to admit defeat.  :-)

/kevin