Yeah! A Soapbox!

In the context of a LinkedIn forum discussing which tool is "better" for a 450 page user guide, I wrote the following:

It's about the way the tool is used more than which tool you choose to use. I used InDesign to work on a user guide that was about 150 pages. The issues I most commonly spout off about were more about the way the tool was used than anything. Here's just one example that applies to this discussion. For this specific user guide, the TOC was manually typed. This was not my choice. In order to verify the TOC was correct, the entire file was printed to hard copy and then manually verified to ensure the TOC was correct. And if it wasn't? Reprint the whole user guide and start over. I wish I was making that up but I lived it.

My point is that if you use the tool like an idiot, the tool isn't going to make your actions less idiotic as the tool - FrameMaker, Word, InDesign or anything else - will do what you tell it to do.