Comparing Document Publishing Programs Adobe FrameMaker and Corel Ventura News & Views Software Review

by John Williamson John Williamson has sixteen years R&D experience in avionics and business development. He is currently consulting as a technical writer. Originally published in News & Views July 1998 issue. Copyright 1998 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

I took a look at two popular document publishing programs, Adobe FrameMaker 5.5 and Corel Ventura 7. In this article, I'll compare the user interface, organizational tools, and electronic publishing capability of these programs. I hope to provide a useful starting point for you to decide which program might best suit your needs. User interface Both programs provide familiar screen interfaces surrounding the work area of the document window. Through the use of menu bars, button bars, tool bars, and status bars you control the format and content of documents. However, this interface reveals the differing pedigree of the two programs. While FrameMaker keeps the extras simple and provides you with easy access to the basic functions needed for document formatting and layout, Ventura provides numerous buttons and tools for accessing the program's drawing and image display and manipulation capability. For instance, while Ventura has a selection of 10 toolbars that can be displayed on the screen, FrameMaker has just two menu bars that you can toggle on or off. FrameMaker and Ventura both provide powerful document handling and formatting functionality. Through the use of master pages and text formatting options, most basic text formatting can be accomplished with just a few key strokes. In these two programs, master pages act as a template for the structure or layout of the pages of your document. Master pages allow you to set such attributes as single-sided or double-sided formatting, margins, headers and footers, and page numbers. Both programs allow you to format multiple master pages with which to base the format of various sections of a publication. Once you have defined the basic layout of your publication through the use of master pages you will have to turn your attention to the formatting of paragraphs and characters. Ventura uses stylesheets to organize all the elements relating to the look and placement of text. Stylesheets are attached to a publication and contain all the paragraph, text, and frame tags that will be applied to that publication. Stylesheets can be copied from one publication to another and edited for content. Although FrameMaker doesn't use stylesheets, it does offer predefined tags-for characters, paragraphs, and tables-that control the look and placement of text. The tags have unique names and are available in every document. You can edit these tags or create new ones. Organizational tools Corel Ventura comes equipped with some nice tools for organizing your work that have no counterpart in FrameMaker. These tools allow you to track changes to a document, and collect in one place favorite tags, images, spreadsheets, etc. Ventura can automatically track and save editing changes, and who made those changes. This can be especially nice when you decide, after several weeks of messy revisions, to go with some original wording. Ventura has a feature called a library that can act as a repository for favorite or useful items that you may wish to use in future publications. If it can be saved, it can be saved to the Ventura library. Anything from actual text to graphics to stylesheets can be saved to the library for future retrieval and use. This feature allows easy retrieval of familiar formatting and graphics and can help ensure consistency across several publications. Corel Ventura comes equipped with a feature appropriately called the Navigator. This tool operates much like Windows Explorer in that it displays a tree-like structure of all the items associated with a particular publication. As Ventura associates items like stylesheets, TOC, and libraries, this tool enables quick and easy access to any part of the document or its associated items. Electronic publishing Both programs allow easy conversion of text to HTML for web publication. That does not mean that the HTML version of your documents will display on a browser the same way that your text version displays in the document window. Both programs convert the document to basic HTML code. This means that layout design, such as multiple columns, graphics, and character formatting may not display as you intended. However, for basic HTML conversions, both programs seem to do an adequate job. In general I found these two programs to be very capable at document publication. FrameMaker has an easier learning curve and provides quick and easy access to basic functions necessary for formatting and publishing a document. While Ventura has a steeper learning curve, it also provides additional capabilities. Neither program was difficult to pick up and both are supported with some very worthwhile third-party books.

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Posted August 1, 1998 (dls)