The Best Alternative to Framemaker

[Unknown]

In reply to Sean, message 10

My project is as described in message 2, and so far I have 1500 pages. The worst problems I’ve faced have to do with figure frames: extra space can appear near a frame, and drawn horizontal lines near the top and bottom borders of a frame can get disassociated from the frame. I have to use drawn lines instead of borders in some instances in order to work around another bug.

You make a sweeping claim about Word bugs without specifying a version of Word or what the bugs do. Could you please be specific so that a reader, such as myself, can judge the relevance to a particular work situation?

In reply to Arnis Gubins, message 11

You make the following statement:

You have to realize that FM is a page-layout tool that can also be used as a writing tool.

It seems to me that this assertion contradicts Adobe’s claims about FM. In the PDF document on this website entitled “How to Choose the Right Adobe Page Layout Software”, Adobe explains that Framemaker is for books, manuals, and technical documents. They even go on to state the following:

“FrameMaker includes all of the authoring tools and features required for reliable, template-driven content authoring….”

Complementing this claim, Adobe states that FM is for documents having a long life of revisions.

It sounds to me like you’re defending the lack of productivity tools in FM on the basis that FM was never intended to have those productivity tools and that they aren’t needed. I suspect that the real reason that FM is deficient in productivity tools is that its development has been sluggish, allowing FM tools to lag behind the times. The result is that FM is substantially inadequate for content creators, but is not as inadequate for content formatters, a topic that I address in the thread “Will the FM user go the way of the dodo?”.

Regarding your personal experience of using Word, I appreciate hearing this. But could you please specify the version of Word, along with the worst bugs that gave you so much trouble?

In reply to Fredrik Folkeryd, message 13

In my view, an FM user arguing against the automatic features of Word is like a photographer arguing against automatic exposure adjustment and automatic focus.

I agree that the automatic features of Word can be troubling, but the solution is not to do away with them, but to make it clear to the user what’s happening and how the user can selectively turn them off or adjust them. The undo list indicates the automatic commands executed, but the undo list is normally hidden. It would be helpful if there were an option to continuously display the last N commands of the undo list, allowing the user to readily see what they are. It would also be helpful if the user had the option of having the office assistant announce the execution of an automatic command and ask if the user would like it turned off or adjusted.

[Gerry Roston]

I would like to thank you all for sharing your opinions. Based on your conversation, I plan to cancel my order for FM 7 and create the document I am working on in Word. Yes, FM has some useful features, but they continue to ignore every user request made over the last 10 years. FM is clearly a dead product, being marketed by an arrogant company that only succeeds in selling licenses to support legacy work.

This attitude is fully supported by fully brain-dead people who cannot imagine a user for multiple undo. This is the hall-mark of a fanatic - sticking to a clearly inferior product without justification.

Don't get me wrong - Word has many short-comings, but it sounds as if FM7 is no different from FM5.1.1, the most recent copy I have. Further, based on these conversations, I cannot justify to my client the reason to spend gobs of money on such archaic and only moderately functional software.

I only wish that some one would recognize the need for a powerful publishing tool and bring it to market.

[Sean]

This attitude is fully supported by fully brain-dead people who cannot imagine a user for multiple undo. This is the hall-mark of a fanatic - sticking to a clearly inferior product without justification.

I dunno, one might question your zealotry for multiple undo, or your inability to consider, with an open mind, the issues raised. Indeed, your assertion is rather insulting.

For example, I want multiple undo. But, there are other things I want more. And, I don't want multiple undo at the expense of resource use and program performance.

Can you understand that those might be valid reasons for some, even if you personally don't care about them?

Moreover, is it wrong to point out how FrameMaker is set up to do certain things efficiently, things for which multiple undo is an inefficient workaround in other products?

Anyway, good luck with your new direction! I'm sure you'll make it work out.

Cheers,

Sean

P.S. I was a long-time Corel Ventura (Xerox Ventura Publisher) user. You might consider giving it a try, it probably has much of what you are looking for.

[Tom Geschwender]

Personally, I hardly ever make mistakes, and never make the same mistake twice, so multiple undo is a totally foreign concept to me any way.

Good luck with Word. Please provide a vocabulary list of the "Words" you use when your document goes to hell, without the handbasket.

[Horace Smith]

No one seems to have mentioned in this discussion the wonderful ability of Word 97 to, after you have torn every hair out of your head getting something to work, lose some or all of it in storage -- if not overnight (it can do that, too), then long term.

I haven't seem much of that in Frame. Yet.

[Tim Murray]

> and only moderately functional software.

Honestly, it sounds like you (Gerry) don't know a whole lot about Frame.
And, FWIW, even FM6's addition of the new chapnum and volnum variables, and
what you can do book-wide, have paid for themselves many times over.

[Michael Kazlow]

"Horace Smith" wrote:

>I haven't seem much of that in Frame. Yet.

Horace,
Frame is capable of turning a file to mulch and generating the most
lovely error reference numbers. This happens aAt the worst possible
times. That is why a backup is essential. However, Frame does this
much less often than Word.

...Mike

[BrianPKim]

To Fredrik Folkeryd - 01:16pm May 13, 2002 ... I like what you wrote. I agree.

I would argue that the choice of tool has impact on efficiency even beyond any battling of "bugs" (incidentally, in order not to devalue the word I would prefer reserving "bug" for programming errors that cause the application to malfunction; to label functional deficiency or merely cumbersome solutions as "bugs" seems to be a linguistic short-cut that can only lead to misunderstanding).

WADS - I think it was InfoWorld, where they made three descriptions of program structures - works fine, bugs and WADS. Or, "Works As Designed Stupid." Which includes the way I think it should work as compared to the way it correctly works.

This is fine if you're writing a memo, based on a Microsoft template. If you're doing anything else, then the systemic use of overrides in Word will soon have you bend over backwards to fix things. This phenomenon becomes especially apparent when several authors are involved or when the document(s) need to be moved to other systems.

This has not changed since the days of character-based applications. And it extends beyond Word or FrameMaker. Several authors is the key word here. Plus it's easy to change the template. The users usually don't recognize the term, normal.dot. The problem usually began with "the guy before" or MIS.

In Word, on the other hand, there are more ways to do things, closer interaction with other programs and less transparency ("ordinary" users shouldn't have to bother with the intricate detail). Trouble is, even when you don't know you're making a decision, you are, and in Word you're doing it all the time. Thus, you may not realize that the formatting of numbered lists is dependent on the "Normal" template of the local Office installation.

This is a good point. Should the settings in "Normal" template be prescribed by MIS, based on each user, or tied to the document? And remember what Tim Murray notes - some numbering styles are written to the registry, and therefore tied to that specific machine's hard drive.

Therefore, in my opinion, the threshold to producing a high-end document in Word (if at all advisable) is much higher than in FM. In other words, to do it right in Word when it comes to long documents (so you don't have to fix things at a later stage), you have to have a seriously thorough understanding of how Word works.

Is there one application which satisfies every individual's style of composition and the collective purpose of the combined content? Are we talking apples and apples?

I used to play horn in a symphonic band. We all had sheet music, agreed to play in tune, and had to follow the conductor's beat. Is this different? Is this Word or FrameMaker?

[Robert G. Ambos]

For what it is worth, I've worked with Ventura, Quark, Framemaker, and In-Design and for my purposes (mostly textbooks, table-heavy catalogs, brochures, and database docments) Ventura has it head-and-shoulders over any of them. However, if, as it appears, Corel discontinues support for Ventura, my second choice is In-Design. I find MS Word to be awkward and inconvenient. Version 2 of In-Design is begining to look pretty good. Framemaker (Version 7) is fourth on my preference list, with Quark third.

--Bob