Re: So what if Frame dies? [WHAT REALLY HAPPENED]

[Hedley Finger <hedley.finger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Adobe have always used FrameMaker for ALL their user documentation --
even the PageMaker documentation.  So their own technical writers would
have told them that replacing FrameMaker with PageMaker would never have
flown.  (What I can't understand is why they don't listen to their own
tech. writers complaining about the things we all complain about:
chapter ToCs; proper end notes, mixed with footnotes if necessary;
proper flowing of lengthy footnotes; revision tracking and comment
insertion for review/rework cycles, like Word; an outline view and a
scrolling "normal" view, again like Word; multiple windows or panes into
the same document; template linking; book wide operations like
search-and-replace; and ... oh, why bother?) 

What actually happened was that Frame Technologies and Adobe were
working together to ensure that FM would become a seamless front-end to
Acrobat by preserving all the hyperlinks, etc.  Remember that Acrobat
was a new technology then and Adobe badly needed a good front-end
development tool that worked hand-in-glove with Acrobat in order to gain
street credibility for the new product.

Frame Tech's finances couldn't support the development task of
continuing to improve FM and FrameBuilder (now FrameMaker+SGML) to
release on Mac, Win, HP-UX, Solaris, SunOS, and so on simultaneously --
which had always been their policy.  Collaborating closely on the
Acrobat-FrameMaker integration made it easy for Adobe to buy out Frame
Tech and for them to accept the offer.

Unfortunately, the Adobe culture appears to be dominated by the graphic
designers and graphic arts (= prepress, colour, and print production),
which is reflected in all their other products.  No-one appears to
understand that FrameMaker is a CONTENT-DEVELOPMENT tool, not a layout
tool, hence the shoddy marketing and poor promotion.  By the way, B.
Mark Hilton and Lee Richardson, don't let them grind you down.  And set
up some display stalls at book publishers conference to expand beyond
the tech. writing ghetto.

> As a frame user since the bad ol days of frame technoligies v3.1 (actually 
> great customer service). The story has been going around that Adobe orig. 
> bought frame so they could kill it and replace with pagemaker... I think they 
> were toying with the idea around v5.0, but realized that page would never cut 
> it and so turned page into a MSPublisher clone with better features.
> 

...
> 
> andy


[FrameMaker 5.5.6, Acrobat 3.02, Windows 98, HP OmniBook 2100]

Regards,
Hedley Finger   Technical Writer


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