Latest version doesn't quite make the cut
If you've been using your Mac for more than word processing, you've probably encountered a DocMaker document. These small stand-alone documents are used for everything from on-disk software or shareware documentation to attempts to take the shareware concept and apply it to the written word - most commonly in the form of HTML dictionaries or computer game strategy guides. The predecessor of Macinsoft, GameRate (that was even before MacWare, if you're keeping track), used it for its six issues, which swelled to upwards of 3 MegaBytes an issue by the end and, alas, DocMaker's lack of compression is perhaps it's greatest downside.
The stand-alone products that DocMaker creates can do more than an ordinary documents can. You can place pictures in them which act as buttons which can perform any one of a variety of functions; you can use them to play sounds, go to a different chapter of the document, print the document, or even open a different application. Since DocMaker documents are applications, you can link documents with buttons to keep memory requirements low in extremely large docs. In essence, DocMaker is a downgraded WYSIWYG, HTML encoder with it's own built in browser.
To put it simply, DocMaker is useless for many applications that it could be perfect for. It offers you virtually no control over what the end user sees, rendering it virtually useless to people for whom appearances are everything. When I see a poorly designed software manual it leaves the impression that the product is "half-baked." In DocMaker, the images and the text are two completely separate entities and one does not affect the other. For instance, text does not automatically wrap around graphics - you have to manually wrap it. If you've ever tried to do that, you know that it is extremely frustrating and time-consuming to go back and try to fix mistakes. Suppose you have a centered image between two blocks of text and you try to add some text to the first section. You just lost half of you last line behind the graphic, which is locked firmly in place. Future versions of DocMaker must integrate the graphics and text more closely so as to avoid such irritating endeveurs.
GameRate's (the former Macinsoft) final issues reached upwards of 3 Megabytes. This is an enormous size for a relatively small document, especially when it is being transported over the Internet. We found ourselves in a constant struggle to keep the file size low while providing quality screen shots with our reviews. When we moved to the World Wide Web this summer, we significantly increased our number of readers because people don't face an hour-long download (GameRate was in the days of the 14.4) in order to obtain something that they don't even know will be worth their time. Our entire web site currently takes up about 400k, and it is larger than any issue of GameRate. One reason for this massive size difference is that DocMaker files aren't optimized for size. They use the PICT format for graphics, even though JPEGs and GIFs are significantly smaller with virtually no degredation in the image's appearance. The portion of a DocMaker document that allows it to "stand-alone" adds increases the size of the document even more.
DocMaker is perfectly suitable for simple applications where top-notch design and layout are not important, and where size is not an issue. For instance, the DocMaker document that comes on every Zip disk is an excellent situation where size doesn't matter and the document to be viewed is not complex. But when it gets to the point where DocMaker's only advantage for your creation over any other choice is the fact that almost anyone with a Mac can view it, you're better off purchasing a copy of Adobe's AcrobatPro while companies who still use DocMaker for complex files should certainly switch over to the defacto standard of PDFs.
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