Adobe Framemaker 7.0

What it offers over Word:
Stability, table styles, inline graphic placement options, sideheads, runin paragraph styles, independent and outline numbering systems that always work, graphics library (reference pages), conditional text, variables, complex headers and footers, straddle heads, ability to pull in photoshop and illustrator files directly.

What it offers over InDesign or Quark:
Numbering, table styles, inline graphic placement options, sideheads, paragraph styles that can straddle columns automatically, variables, equation editor, footnotes, various automated lists.

Yes, the keystrokes are left over from its Unix heritage, and there is only one level of undos. There is a learning curve, but for long documents, it has no peer. Ventura is not as stable, and LaTex is too complicated. I wouldn't recommend it for making a newsletter, but for long and technical documents with numbering, tables, cross-refs, etc. it is a wonderful program.

Framemaker is a really good product for complex layouts and unusual page sizes. So for newsletters, fancy foldout marketing pieces, and non-standard size manuals, it really does a nice job.

As for efficiency for just getting your word processing done, I have to give it a firm thumbs down. Also, you can really tell this product was not originally developed for Windows because so many of the standard shortcut keys and features are simply not present. I give you the following examples of inefficiency:

Ctrl+Z to undo can undo only one time. Unfortunately, I'm not perfect enough to consistently only make one mistake at a time.

In tables, the only way you can select an entire row or column is to drag your mouse. If you are in one cell and want to move to the next row but the same column (the cell immediately below), you have to either tab over until you get through the current row or else get your mouse and click the cell you want.

There are some buttons on the toolbars that have no equivalent on the menu bar. There is no way to assign your own shortcut keys to various functions you might use often.

If you want to resize a graphic, but only know how wide you want it, you can't simply enter the width and then have it calculate the length in order to maintain the same aspect.

It's all these seemingly small things that in actuality, when implemented properly, can really increase your efficiency so that you can focus on what's important: writing. For the price of this product, I would really like to see them pay more attention to things that you really need on a regular basis instead of focusing on features you might use perhaps twice or less within a book. They really need to get the basics down first instead of just adding bells and whistles.