[277358] in TECHWR-L
Re: [External] Question about a publishing company
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Keith Soltys)
Fri Sep 19 18:23:44 2025
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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 18:09:32 -0400
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To: Tammy Van Boening <tammyvb@spectrumwritingllc.com>,
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From: Keith Soltys <keith@soltys.ca>
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At the time I we purchased it, sometime around 2012, they had two
versions. One was the full version that could be used to create
templates and smart documents with fields that would let users select
items from a list, for example. Another version was for people who would
create documents from the templates. The full version was about $800 CDN
and the more limited version about $300. I don't remember whether there
was an annual subscription or if it was a one-time purchase.
I really liked SmartDocs. It was powerful, easy to use, and quite stable
(assuming you followed proper Word hygiene).. I could do things with it
that were impossible in FrameMaker. It's unfortunate that it was so
expensive. I think that if they had brought the price down (say $200 and
$50 for the two versions) they could have sold ten times as many copies.
Regards.
Keith
On 2025-09-19 4:17 p.m., Tammy Van Boening wrote:
> I used this product as well, and Keith is correct - years ago, it was expensive, so I cannot even imagine what the price would be now. The company that I was working for at the time decided that the cost was too prohibitive even after a demo showing them what writers could do and how efficient we could be even working in Word (and big docs at that), so the budget took a hit even worse when all 4 of us had to add in an extra 20% easily to the bottom line to each of our products so that we could just deal w/ all the cr*p that was inevitable when working with complex technical docs in Word. I would definitely investigate this product for any technical writer condemned to the H*LL of working in Word.
>
> TVB
>
> Tammy Van Boening
> Owner/Principal
> Spectrum Writing, LLC
> Tammyvb at spectrumwritingllc dot com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+tammyvb=spectrumwritingllc.com@lists.techwr-l.com <techwr-l-bounces+tammyvb=spectrumwritingllc.com@lists.techwr-l.com> On Behalf Of Keith Soltys
> Sent: Friday, September 19, 2025 7:07 AM
> To: techwr-l@lists.techwr-l.com
> Subject: Re: [External] Question about a publishing company
>
> I'm not the Keith who posted the first message in this thread, but I have successfully used conditional text in Word but I did it using a tool called SmartDocs from 360Software. I was able to create multiple versions of a protocol specification that was more than 300 pages long and quite complex. You can use it for other things, like creating templates for users and managing variables. and text snippets. I was quite happy with it and it made my life a lot easier.
>
> https://www.36software.com/smartdocs/features
>
> It is expensive, or was, when I was working at the Toronto Stock Exchange I've been retired for seven years now so I don't know how the product has changed or what the current pricing is like.
>
> Regards
> Keith
>
>
> On 2025-09-19 8:33 a.m., Diane Pol wrote:
>> I had started on this 25 years ago and was advised to stop, because I was "reinventing the wheel". I wish I had ignored that advice. Good Luck to you, Keith!
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________________________________
>>
--
--
Keith Soltys
Email: keith@soltys.ca - Alternate Email: ksoltys@gmail.com
Web: http://www.soltys.ca
Blog: http://coredump3.blogspot.com
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