Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: content creation

[Andrew Westcombe <asw@getsystems.com>]

Gary:

If you're running OSX, you can create PDFs from any doc, using Preview. 
That said, Preview doesn't give you a whole lot of control, whereas Acrobat 
does.

The web page -> PDF utility is nice, especially when you want to archive a 
website. I wouldn't recommend it though for printed output though. The best 
results we've gotten so far on the print front take the output from an RTF 
build, open the file in MSWord, make any necessary adjustments, and then 
distill to Acrobat. So if you've got Word you might want to try this.

I really like Acrobat. I use the catalog feature to maintain a rough and 
ready collection of internal documents. This feature creates an index that 
spans all the PDFs in the directories that you point it at. After that, 
anyone with Acrobat Reader (they might need a free plugin) can search 
across the entire collection. The searches support word stemming and 
thesaurus options, so they're quite powerful.

Also, the document comparison tool in Acrobat is the best I've encountered.

Hope this helps.


At 04:11 PM 29/08/2002 -0500, Gary Grobe wrote:
>I'm trying to get the doc process down to create some really nice docs. 
>Using vi w/ docbook is making my fingers tired, but it certainly gives me 
>lots of flexibility. So I went out and bought adobe acrobat thinking it 
>was a sort of create/edit tool for creating manuals, but turns out I think 
>it's only good for making documents into pdf files Probably a waste of $250.
>
>So I converted all my docbook web pages into pdf's and they turned out ok, 
>but was wondering how you guys are going about this (creating some nice 
>user manuals) and if I understand the process correctly. Do you create the 
>content using whatever you wish and then import/convert them into pdf's?
>
>Anyone know of any good gui tools where I can just concentrate on the 
>content (and maybe some that run on OSX, and don't cost too much)?
>
>And if anyone can list a few points about adobe acrobat and how it fits 
>in, that would help calm my nerves about the cost.
>
>Thnxs.


Andrew Westcombe
Documentation Manager
Gaming and Entertainment Technology (GET)
www.getsystems.com

ph. +61-2-9419-2000
email: asw@getsystems.com
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