From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed May 01 2002 - 06:28:48 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> I'm looking for a tool for systems analysis. Not a CASE tool; there's no
> intention of generating code. What I need is a tool for generating design
> documents: I need to create multiple hierarchies of topics, where some (in
> fact most) topics appear in many hierarchies; I need to write extended
> documents under each topic using ordinary word processing; and I need to
> create named relations between topics, where the relations may also contain
> their own subdocuments but are not forced to do so. The tool must not hold
> my data hostage - there must be some way to print it as a single document
> with chapters, and ideally some way to export the underlying data as XML.
Either Corel Ventura or Adobe FrameMaker should fill this requirement. I
happen to be biased in favor of Ventura, which is supposed to be WINE
compliant for linux sometime (haven't been keeping track). You can word
process within it, or embed external txt or rtf files that are editable
externally. Document structures are heirarchically organized, there is
ample equation editing abilities, along with linkable, migratable
footnotes, references, cross-references, and index entry functions.
Indexes and tables of contents can be automatically generated, and you
can print the document, publish to PDF (distiller interprets the TOC and
index as lists of links AND turns them into bookmarks in the PDF),
postscript, or Envoy, and you can even publish to HTML or Barista. I
wrote all of Datamann's MOSP software manuals (1800 page manuals) in
Ventura, and have published them to print, HTML, and PDF on CD-ROM and
the web.
I don't know if Ventura 9 has come out yet, but it is supposed to be XML
compatible. Ventura 8 is highly stable on Win 2000 platforms, better
than any Adobe application.
Mike
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