[277359] in TECHWR-L
Aw: Re: [External] Question about a publishing company
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (e.dickinson@gmx.net)
Sat Sep 20 08:54:47 2025
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From: e.dickinson@gmx.net
To: keith@soltys.ca, techwr-l@techwr-l.com
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2025 10:31:09 +0000
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Hello There,
I may be missing the point...but in this day and age it sounds a huge
effort to do all that using MS Word...
As a technical writer you become acquainted soon with all kinds of
specifications and requirements for the eventual output. Especially
tech docs and even more so (half-)automatically created content from
system events or messages IMHO should not be dealt with that way...
Word famously is a 'desktop publishing' tool... There are heaps of good
and even some free tools around that will do a better job more easily,
more stable and eventually less expensive too.
I did not encounter such a task in my career as technical writer of
roughly more than a decade; but if so, I would ask around chats of
software developers' channels and groups. They may have a good answer
ready to hand...
Keith, usually of course it's about the money, for publishers just as
well...so when you've already checked and have an idea how many people
may need this yet (traditional industries come to mind, still using
Word on a larger scale...), you may interest the right publisher with
those numbers...
Good luck and all the best!
Nina
Gesendet: Samstag, 20. September 2025 um 00:09
Von: "Keith Soltys" <keith@soltys.ca>
An: "Tammy Van Boening" <tammyvb@spectrumwritingllc.com>,
"techwr-l@lists.techwr-l.com" <techwr-l@lists.techwr-l.com>
Betreff: Re: [External] Question about a publishing company
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.
>
> [1]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: [2]http://www.soltys.ca
Blog: [3]http://coredump3.blogspot.com
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References
1. https://www.36software.com/smartdocs/features
2. http://www.soltys.ca/
3. http://coredump3.blogspot.com/
4. https://techwhirl.com/
5. http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/
6. http://techwhirl.com/
7. http://techwr-l.com/archives
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Visit TechWhirl for the latest on content technology, content strategy and content development | https://techwhirl.com
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