Re: InDesign as a FrameMaker substitute?

[David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Art,

PageMaker was EOL because continuing to support it made little sense
to Adobe beyond the two-year period in which it was carried as a "non
professional" tool with InDesign as the major tool. It was clear that
PageMaker was also an old design that had reached the wall in some
respects, and could never truly compete in the high-end space with
Quark.

During that last two years, PageMaker was positioned as a competitor
for Microsoft Publisher, but the longer learning curve made that an
impossible quest. So, as InDesign became more polished, PageMaker was
history.

Although using the InDesign engine in an entirely different product is
certainly possible, I doubt it will happen that way. I'd bet that the
capabilities needed for long docs will continue to be added into the
primary InDesign base--partly to give them a much larger upgrade base
for the additional revenue, partly to keep development focused on a
single code base.

Today, the single largest trend in publishing is XML integration. All
previous plans have had to be altered because of it--and some of this
move is making other approaches obsolete.

David

On 8/16/05, Art Campbell <art -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> Well, I guess we can agree to disagree. Or that we're both right.
> 
> I'd agree with you that ID was launched as a Quark competitor, but
> InDesign rolled out generally in the same time frame Pagemaker was
> end-of-lifed, and Pagemaker users were (still are) offered incentives
> to switch. Yes, it was lame, and yes, as most programs do, it got
> better.

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