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Last updated 28 October 2008.

Books for a very incomplete collection of tools. I can’t begin to keep up with the tools that technical communicators are using, especially since most of them are Windows-based and I no longer use Windows.

See also the page on graphics for graphics tools.

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat 8 Classroom in a Book
Adobe Press, 2007, 528pp+CD, ISBN 0321470850. Order from Amazon.com
Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible, by Ted Padova
Wiley, 2007, 1085pp+CD, ISBN 978-0470050514. Order from Amazon.com

Note: Many free alternatives to Adobe Acrobat are available; if you do not need high-end pre-press capabilities, one of the alternatives may suit you. OpenOffice.org (see below) has quite a good built-in PDF creator.

Adobe FrameMaker

Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8, by Sarah O’Keefe et al.
Scriptorium Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0970473349. Order from Amazon.com
Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 Classroom in a Book, by Adobe Creative Team
Adobe Press, 2002, ISBN 0321131681. Order from Amazon.com
FrameMaker 7: The Complete Reference, by Sarah O’Keefe and Sheila A. Loring
McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2002, ISBN 0072223618. Order from Amazon.com
 

Microsoft Office

Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2007, by Ed Bott and Woody Leonhard
Que, 2006, 1020pp, ISBN 978-0789735171. Order from Amazon.com
Special Edition Using Microsoft Word 2007, by Faithe Wempen et al.
Que, 2006, 1104pp, ISBN 978-0789736086. Order from Amazon.com
 

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is the free, open source alternative to Microsoft Office. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems. It is my preferred office suite, and I am one of the volunteer authors/editors of the user guides for the program. These books are not available through Amazon.com, although an earlier version of the Getting Started guide is there.

OpenOffice.org 3 was released in October 2008. It is much improved, with some great new features. You can get OOo version 3 from the OpenOffice.org website. Take it for a test drive. If you like it, keep it! No license fees or other charges.

Here is a list of books on OpenOffice.org.


Amazon.com gift certificates

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