Re: FrameMaker Difficulties

[Maurice King <benadam -at- CYBERDUDE -dot- COM>]

When I posted a query about porting RTF files from FrameMaker, I didn't dream that I'd spawn a critique of FrameMaker, but I guess it's inevitable. We're all tired of fluky software, and that seems to be what dominates the market.

I still regard FrameMaker as my tool of choice in most all situations. I do have a problem with upgrades that torpedo earlier methods of supporting documentation needs, and that was the basis of my earlier post. It is very hard for me to understand why Adobe chose to change the RTF export so that all the tag names would be lost in the exported file; that really makes no sense unless they are trying to signal that nobody is supposed to port out of FrameMaker.

There is little comparison between the strength of FrameMaker as compared to Word. When people ask me to explain, I say to them that if you're planning a cross-country journey, you don't buy a tricycle. You CAN make the trip on a tricycle, but why bother if you have other means that are better suited to handle the job?

FrameMaker does crash, and Adobe's online support leaves much to be desired, but FrameMaker handles far more in terms of publication management than does Word. If you need to generate PDF files or print with crop marks for a printing house, there's no contest at all. If you have to do cross-chapter operations, again, FrameMaker handles the job with far greater ease than Word.

However, if you have a computer that is short on disk size, resources, and power, you'll not enjoy FrameMaker's advantages. FrameMaker is definitely a power-user's tool, and it requires a powerful computer to benefit from its many features without pain. Word, on the other hand, works the same with all computers.

I'm definitely not a Word fan because I've been forced to do too many oversized jobs in Word in the past when there was no justification for doing so. I once had to turn out a user's manual for a radio that required that I create all the user's screens from the radio in CorelDRAW, then pull them into the manual along the right border, with the text ending at the relevant radio screen. There were several graphic buttons that I was required to insert in the text, and the project manager insisted that I align the buttons so that they did not protrude awkwardly above the line of text. In FrameMaker, this job would have been easy, but in Word, I was forced to create each line of procedure text in a table with no semblance of uniform size between the cells, and THEN to adjust the lines of text line per line. It was NOT fun, and when the project came back to me two months later for an upgrade, I immediately converted the entire manual into FrameMaker because I had no intention of suf!
fering forever from this nasty job. Ultimately, the project manager liked the upgrade better, especially when he saw that I could produce a PDF version within minutes after completing the manual. Sure, I could have done it in Word, but not in minutes and not on the same level.

If you have problems with FrameMaker, sadly I report that Adobe's support is, in my opinion, sadly inadequate. However, Microsoft's customer support is a pet peeve for persons around the world, so decide if you want to work with professional software and cry over its problems or to work with software that you know is not designed for your job and cry over its problems.

These are the things that keep our work from being dull...

- Maury

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