I agree. Word tried to make master docs in order to try and match WP, which did handle them (mostly) reasonably well. But Word master docs have ALWAYS been a disaster. They have never been well engineered. And yeah, whoever put that gong show into Word should have had their paychecks printed out from a master doc, with every single character of the check in separate sub-docs....



Good luck with that. After more than a decade of grief I wish they would just kill it. No one will miss it.

As for FrameMaker, quite a different kettle of fish. Great great application! Sigh. I also miss using Quark. I disliked Word also trying to be a graphic layout application. Mind you it is better than it used to be, but really, keep the darn thing a top level word processor.

This discussion has been very helpful to me. Thanks to everyone who's contributed.

Given that Framemaker has been mentioned, I would appreciate extending the discussion a bit to desktop publishing.

I am writing a book that will combine text on the right-handed page with graphics (mostly photos) on the opposite page. Thus, there will be a lot of page layout work.

At present, my plan is to develop all the text in Word and then bring that into a desktop publishing program like PagePlus, where I will integrate it with the graphics. I want the final product to be ready for delivery to a professional printer.

Does that sound like a sensible approach?

Will PagePlus be a good program for this process? Or should I use something more powerful like Framemaker (which is a lot more expensive)?

Or should I just stay with Word for the entire project?

Your thoughts will be appreciated.