bob@brspyr1.BRS.Com (Bob Armao) (08/22/89)
I'm interested in first-hand reports of your experience using WordPerfect 5.0 to produce LONG documents (i.e., technical manuals exceeding 400+ pages in length). In particular, how well does 5.0 WP handle tables of contents, indexes, pagination, etc. in documents of this length? And how fast? Our experience with WP 4.2 under UNIX has been less than ideal. These shortcomings (such as the inability to produce a complete index from a concordance file) may or may not occur in WP 5.0. Since we aren't confident in the functionality and speed of WordPerfect5.0, we are considering using Ventura for managing long documents. I'd be interested hearing comparable experiences from Ventura users too, and especially from someone who has used both of these products to produce long manuals. I'm cross-posting this in comp.text since I'm getting virtually no traffic through comp.text.desktop. Thanks for your opinions and suggestions. -- Bob Armao (bob@brspyr1.BRS.Com) | If u cn rd ths sgntr, UUCP: uunet!crdgw1!brspyr1!bob | u cn mk Bg $$ induh xitng BRS Information Technologies | wrld ov dkumntshun. Phone: (518) 783-1161 |--------------------------------
casey@well.UUCP (Kathleen Creighton) (08/23/89)
It seems to me you're talking about two different things here. You apparently need the power of a word processing program to create your table of contents and indexes, and you need to be able to produce a long document in dtp. Having done quite a lot of dtp with WordPerfect, I would make the following recommendation: Don't even *try* to compose the manual as one document, but use WP 5.0's "Master Document" feature instead. Do the whole job as straight text files to your default printer. Do not attempt any dtp formatting until the text is complete and completely edited. This is as a safeguard to preserve the integrity of the text document and with no fancy formatting these files are *less likely* to become corrupt. Even if you do use Ventura, you'll have to produce your tables of contents and indexes with *something*. Once your WP document is finished and edited, you can then make a decision as to dtp with WP or Ventura. However, do not attempt to dtp format your original WP text files--make *copies* and proceed from there. Whether you'll want to use WP 5.0 or Ventura at that point depends on how complex the dtp formatting will be. If it's complex and includes lots of graphics and/or charts, I would recommend Ventura. If you use the "Master Document" setup, speed will not be a problem (and "speed" is relative to the system you're using anyhow). I find processing WP dtp files on my XT to be unacceptably slow (but I do it anyhow). Remember that your (potential) biggest problem with WP files is the possibility of corruption. You can minimize this by using the latest version of WP 5.0 (6/12/89) and by staying in straight text mode until you're ready to apply more fancy formatting with styles and other dtp elements. At that point, remember to *copy* the text files and not use the originals. And using text files (set up in the default of Courier 10) are easier to read and edit.
jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) (08/25/89)
> Bob Armao writes: > > I'm interested in first-hand reports of your experience using > WordPerfect 5.0 to produce LONG documents (i.e., technical manuals > exceeding 400+ pages in length). In particular, how well does 5.0 > WP handle tables of contents, indexes, pagination, etc. in documents > of this length? And how fast? > > Our experience with WP 4.2 under UNIX has been less than ideal. > These shortcomings (such as the inability to produce a complete > index from a concordance file) may or may not occur in WP 5.0. > Since we aren't confident in the functionality and speed of > WordPerfect5.0, we are considering using Ventura for managing > long documents. I'd be interested hearing comparable experiences > from Ventura users too, and especially from someone who has used > both of these products to produce long manuals. Consider carefully what you want to do. WordPerfect 5.0 and Ventura both do very well at long documents, TOCs and indices. However, WordPerfect is text oriented with graphic support while Ventura is page oriented with text support. WordPerfect has things like: * find and replace * spell check * auto-number paragraph that are not in Ventura. In addition, when you "anchor" a figure in Ventura, it moves to the SAME POSITION on the page contining the text, e.g., if you put a figure in the upper left corner of the page, add some text ahead of the figure, and then update, the figure will be in the upper left corner of the new page. In WordPerfect, the figure can be anchored relative to the paragraph rather than the page so that it will occur immediately before (or after) the paragraph as the paragraph moves from page to page. Ventura is ideal for newsletters, catalogs, magazines, and other items that are PAGE oriented. WordPerfect is terrible for items that are PAGE oriented, but excellent for items (like technical documentation) that are TEXT oriented. In Ventura, use multichapters for long documents. In WordPerfect use master document (doccument assembly) for long documents. Good luck. Jim Winer -- Those persons who advocate censorship offend my religion. Upuaut: a wolf-headed Egyptian deity | Voodoo: the art of sticking ideas assigned as Guidance System | into people and watching for the Barque of Ra. | them bleed. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily
BL.JPL@forsythe.stanford.edu (Jonathan Lavigne) (08/25/89)
In article <1583@lzfme.att.com>, jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) writes: >In addition, when you "anchor" a figure in >Ventura, it moves to the SAME POSITION on the page contining the >text, e.g., if you put a figure in the upper left corner of the >page, add some text ahead of the figure, and then update, the figure >will be in the upper left corner of the new page. In WordPerfect, Not true according to the reference manual for Ventura 2.0 which says (p. 5-50) that you can choose whether an anchored frame appears in a fixed position on the page OR directly above or below the text to which it's anchored. Jonathan Lavigne BL.JPL@RLG.STANFORD.EDU Research Libraries Group Stanford University
jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk (Jonathan Knight) (08/26/89)
From article <1583@lzfme.att.com>, by jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ): >> Bob Armao writes: > WordPerfect has things like: > > * find and replace > * spell check > * auto-number paragraph > > that are not in Ventura. True. I use a seperate spell checker on the text, Ventura will produce an ASCII file that'll go through a spell checker without to much trouble. I tend to use WordStar in non-document mode, but any spell checker would do the trick. > In addition, when you "anchor" a figure in > Ventura, it moves to the SAME POSITION on the page contining the > text. Not so. In Ventura you can place a frame on a page or anchor it to text. If anchored to text I think you can specify that the frame appears as close to the anchor as possible or at the paragraph break. This feature is very well done and allows you to do almost anything you want. > Ventura is ideal for newsletters, catalogs, magazines, and other > items that are PAGE oriented. Nope. I use it for chapter oriented things. Its great for long documents where consistant styling is needed. It's also great for all those who want to do all the great things that a PostScript printer can do without learning PostScript. I've never used WordPerfect and I'm only 3/4's of the way through "Ventura - The Complete Reference" which is a real eye opener for a troff fanatic! I haven't touched troff since I started reading it. It's also a good example of how a camera ready Ventura document can look. -- ______ JANET :jonathan@uk.ac.keele.cs Jonathan Knight, / BITNET:jonathan%cs.kl.ac.uk@ukacrl Department of Computer Science / _ __ other :jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk University of Keele, Keele, (_/ (_) / / UUCP :...!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan Staffordshire. ST5 5BG. U.K.
cetron@wasatch.utah.edu (Edward J Cetron) (09/02/89)
On a related topic: I have a subcontractor who has just informed me that all of their technical documentation will be late, the cause: All of their techwriters use Wordperfect, but their corporate office requires that all docs coming out the of the corp to be in Ventura. So now I have a 4-10 week delay (so they say) to have all of the documents ported from WP to Ventura after they are written/proofed etc.... My question: Can the conversion between WP and Ventura be automated by some sort of script or using some intermediate format? Thanks ed cetron@wasatch.utah.edu AND cetron@cc.utah.edu (please respond to both if you mail - .utah.edu is reconfiguring....)
jwi@lzfme.att.com (J.WINER) (09/05/89)
Edward J Cetron writes: > > On a related topic: I have a subcontractor who has just informed > me that all of their technical documentation will be late, the cause: > > All of their techwriters use Wordperfect, but their corporate office > requires that all docs coming out the of the corp to be in Ventura. So now > I have a 4-10 week delay (so they say) to have all of the documents ported > from WP to Ventura after they are written/proofed etc.... > > My question: Can the conversion between WP and Ventura be automated > by some sort of script or using some intermediate format? Begin by calling WordPerfect Copr in Orem, UT to get the specifications for WP5.0 files ($20). Then write a fairly simple program in awk (polyawk for the pc) to convert WP style-on codes to Ventura format codes. You can also change most other WP codes to corresponding Ventura codes. The Ventura codes are listed in the Ventura documentation. It should take an experienced awk programmer about one to two days to write this program. The smae program written in C will take three days to two weeks. (awk is better at string handling.) There may be some additional hand work required. There are also some constructs in WP that cannot be translated to Ventura in any straightforward way. In particular, WP has some facilities for drawing multiple (different length) horizontal lines that Ventura cannot duplicate without creating dummy frames or using graphics mode. If these have been incorporated into headings with different formats on chapter title pages, you will have lots of fun. (Obviously, I am dealing with the same problems, but my time scale will not solve these problems in time to help you. If you do get a solution, please let me know.) If I can be of additional help, please call me at 201-957-6068 (Bell Labs) or 201-899-0804 (home). In general, e-mail will reach me, but I can't get back to you. Jim Winer -- Those persons who advocate censorship offend my religion. Upuaut: a wolf-headed Egyptian deity | Voodoo: the art of sticking ideas assigned as Guidance System | into people and watching for the Barque of Ra. | them bleed. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily
howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM (Howard Stateman) (09/06/89)
cetron@wasatch.utah.edu (Edward J Cetron) writes: >On a related topic: I have a subcontractor who has just informed >me that all of their technical documentation will be late, the cause: > >All of their techwriters use Wordperfect, but their corporate office >requires that all docs coming out the of the corp to be in Ventura. So now >I have a 4-10 week delay (so they say) to have all of the documents ported >from WP to Ventura after they are written/proofed etc.... Your subcontractor's problem is one of bureaucracy, not one of technical capabilities. Once the WordPerfect document is proofed, it can be brought into Ventura in a matter of seconds. His delay is caused, most likely, by having to find someone with Ventura, trying to get that person to allow him to put the file into Ventura, and maybe getting the diskettes to do this. Tell your subcontractor to spend the $$ for a copy of Ventura, put it on one of his techwriters' PC's, and assign that techwriter to be the import guru for the department. It is well worth the investment, and also will give him "local control" of the final product. ...................................................................... . Howard Stateman | I knew French was a language by age 6. . . howeird@hpwrce.HP.COM | At 19 I discovered it was also a tongue. . . hplabs!hpwrce!howeird |............................................. . [Not an HP spokesman] | Anatomically Correct BBS (415) 364-3739 . ......................................................................