Alternatives to Frame? (long)

["Mark Barratt" <markb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(OK, I know I said wait and see, but no XML round-tripping, no Unicode, no
TEX-algorithm H&J, no PostScript printing, no attachment of master pages to
para/element tags just about does it for me)

So what are the alternatives to FrameMaker(+SGML)?

I've been looking and not finding much, even if I widen the net and assume
that I would have to replace it with several applications to cover DTD
design, editing, output to Word, HTML and XML, and print formatting.

It looks like FM+SGML is still, with all its faults, the best 'Swiss Army
knife' of the publishing world and the best basis for single-source
publishing in not-huge projects.

Here's a summary of what we know. If you have comments or know more, please
tell me off-line and I'll do a summary to the list (or the web if there is a
lot of stuff).

Ventura was a competitor once. We last evaluated it at version 7, which was
packed full of features but we found it unusable because very buggy. V8 has
been around for a while. Any experiences?

3B2 has a lot of strengths in volume publishing and is hugely configurable,
but has an interface that is deeply unpleasant. It will, however, do SGML,
XML, Word import (and export?), high-quality PostScript, imposition and
auto-pagination. Expensive.

Xpress 4.1 is a much nicer tool than Frame for making print documents, and a
disciplined author/editor/design team plus a couple of Xtensions can deliver
fairly decent docs with enough structure to capture and convert. The XML
Xtension is very buggy so far, but promises a lot. We've moved our own
design/production from mostly-Xpress to first Frame than Frame+SGML over the
last few years, and have evangelised Frame pretty successfully to the UK
government-publishing and information design communities. Maybe we'll have
to move back...

InDesign - we've been evaluating on Mac and Windows - is also a nice print
tool, but it has a lot of problems still, and structured output is
problematic. I notice 1.5 is announced but don't know whether it's much
better. Anyone tried it?

XMetal is a roll-your-own XML editor, so you can build your own editing
experience, but formatting support for print is nonexistent, and it has what
seems to be SoftQuad's trademark contempt for fragments or illegal tagging -
all errors are fatal. At the same time, it's the best XML editor we've seen.

Stilo WebWriter is another candidate XML editor, but it's buggy and
unpleasant to use. Seems to be an SGML editor that hasn't been properly
adapted for XML (no Unicode support, for example).

Word 2000 is a distinct improvement on 97/98 and offers promise. Bill Gates
is a big fan of XML. The XML tools ain't there yet, but they could be soon.

We know nothing about Adept or Interleaf tools apart from seeing demos. They
have always struck us as costly and hard to configure and lacking in
high-quality print output support. Our projects tend to be relatively small
and quick, so tools with a lot of setup for each document type don't attract
us. Building structure in the Frame EDD strikes us as quick and easy.


Mark Barratt
Text Matters
phone +44 (0)118 986 8313
fax +44 (0)118 931 3743
email markb@textmatters.com
web http://www.textmatters.com


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