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That depends very much on what kinds of contract you are going for.
There's two issues to consider: Functionality - how much can you do how
well with the tools - and file formats - can you read and write the file
formats your customers have or want.
As far as I can see, you're not missing out on major functionality,
although the book functions introduced in FM 6 can save you a lot of time
on some projects. The upgrades on the other tools also have been largely
incremental; check the vendors' websites to see whether there is anything
new that would make a big difference for the work you have in mind.
File compatibility could be more of an issue:
If you just contract for deliverables (i.e. paper, films, PDF, HTML
files), you should be fine, although newer versions of WebWorks offer
improved online help output.
You should still be fine if your customer wants Word source documents;
the file format hasn't changed since Office 2000.
If your customers want FrameMaker files or you have to fit into an
existing FrameMaker workflow (accepting FrameMaker source files from
customers), you may run into problems.
From the traffic on the list I get the impression that maybe a third or
less of the sites still use FM 5.5. FM 7 adoption has just started, but
of course as a contractor you'll have exposure to a lot of clients
(hopefully ;-) and just one of them with FM 7 would require you to upgrade.
That said, I see no particular reason to upgrade before you have a
concrete project requiring, say, working with FM 6 files. The newer
versions are similar enough that the learning associated with upgrading
is minimal to moderate, so you should be able to make a 'just in time'
upgrade work.
Hope this helps
Jan Henning
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Jan Henning
ROSEMANN & LAURIDSEN GMBH
Am Schlossberg 14, D-82547 Eurasburg, Germany
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