atw: Re: Framemaker - A Few Random Observations


If you believe the reports that circulate on such places as the FrameMaker Forum, FM for Windows is probably still being developed and upgraded at Adobe's Indian research and development site. It's unlikely to ever return for the mac, but the Windows version looks like it might have a fair bit of life left yet. Whether there will ever be any real reworking of the original code is a moot point though.
Incidentally, apart from its robustness and ability to handle multi- file documents, it's still touted by many as the best option for long documents, particularly those requiring custom indexes, cross- refs, conditional text etc.

Depends what you mean by "developed and upgraded", or "best option". FM has hardly changed for years, and to many eyes looks quite clunky. Adobe could well decide to stop even the current low level of development, and allow the product to fade away.

FM is the "best option" only in comparison to Word, whose bugs are well known. There are products that out-perform FM by a wide margin: for example, the Arbortext series of products, useful for very long books (like the 10,000 page one I am revising with Arbortext at the moment...).

Arbortext even produces better-looking printed output than FM. The output from FM is outstandingly ugly.

Adobe may have little financial incentive to develop FM: how many technical writers are there in the world, and how much software do they buy? I suspect that we are only a tiny fraction of the market for, say, InDesign.

Adobe also owns RoboHelp (through the Macromedia subsidiary). RoboHelp is a sunset product, and the laid-off development team set up their own company (http://www.madcapsoftware.com/) and offer their own product. (Has anyone tried it?)

Adobe would have had even less financial incentive to keep going with RH: how many technical writers write help systems? What is this market worth?

No software product lasts forever, especially if it is not particularly profitable for its owner. We should be planning for a future without FrameMaker and without RoboHelp.

JH
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