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Publisher is the equivalent of InDesign. It was meant for brochures and so on. If you want to write a long technical manual today most people use Word. In that
by lateforwork 8mo ago
Publisher is the equivalent of InDesign. It was meant for brochures and so on. If you want to write a long technical manual today most people use Word. In that respect we are using less powerful software today than our grandparents.
Note: Adobe bought FrameMaker and continues to sell FrameMaker. But Word has captured the market not because of its technical merit but because of bundling.
- ferguess_k 8mo agoI have never written any technical manuals, but I'm surprised that Word is the choice of tool. How does one embed e.g. code easily in the document? I feel there must be a better way to do it, maybe some kind of markdown syntax? Latex?
- lateforwork 8mo ago> How does one embed e.g. code easily in the document? You don't. For APIs and such, documentation is published online, and you don't need Word for that. Word is used in some industries, where printed manual is needed.
- ferguess_k 8mo agoWhat about the printed manuals? I think they still have some of those not too long ago (e.g. Intel manuals). What was the tool chosen? Very curious to know. Or, maybe a legacy example -- how were the printed manuals of Microsoft C 6.0 written? That was in the early 90s I think.
- WillAdams 8mo agoFramemaker.
- ferguess_k 8mo agoThanks, thought MSFT was using its own tools.
- WillAdams 8mo agoIf you don't make it, you can't use it. Microsoft has never made a technical publishing package, so it has to be outsourced.
- ferguess_k 8mo agoYeah I agreed. Kinda missed the old days with thick manuals. I bought one for gdb a couple of years ago and love it -- despite it is just the paper version of the online one.