Re: RoboHelp For FrameMaker Discontinued -- Please Help Us Save It

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

I don't know. I must be getting old. Time was when I'd get behind 
campaigns of this sort. I remember that, about four years ago, I was 
livid when Adobe canceled the Linux beta for FrameMaker.

Now, I find it hard to care very much. Products come, and products go, 
that's all. There's a lot of old tools that I don't use any more. Just 
this week, I threw out the disks for Hyperwise, an SGML editor for OS/2 
that I did my first tech-writing project one. Haven't used that one for 
at least eight years.

Nor do I hold out much hope for the campaign. If Macromedia was the type 
of company that would be responsive to customers, then it wouldn't have 
canceled the product in the first place.

But I admit that I'm not a big fan of RoboHelp in the first place. The 
product seems ridiculously over-priced for what is essentially a 
database, a compiler, and an HTML editor that borrows all the faults of 
MS Word.

I also can't help thinking that, if RoboHelp for FrameMaker was an open 
source product, it wouldn't matter whether development was discontinued. 
The program would still be available, and the source code would be 
available for someone else to take up.

Finally, while activism is admirable to me, I admit that I would admire 
it even more if it was socially or politically motivated.

I don't mean to disparage the campaign. In fact, I wish it luck. But I 
also think that it's going to need a lot of it. Unfortunately, the 
software was around long enough to develop a group of dedicated users. 
Still, if my expectations are confounded, I'll gladly congratulate the 
mutineers on their persistence.

--
Bruce Byfield
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield

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