RE: Alternatives to Frame? (long)

["Mark Barratt" <markb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Eric

> 1. What is lacking for FM+SGML to round-trip XML?

Not much, which is why it's enraging: mostly the ability to read the XML
declaration and accept an XML-declared DTD or schema for validation. The
character set is a problem up to a point, but FM will write XML in the
ISO-8859-1 character set (the one most people seem to use after ASCII in
XML), so it should be able to read it back in.

In a stable production environment this is not too big a deal: you can write
a filter to turn the XML into Frame-compliant SGML. You can use something
like XMLAuthority to convert the XML DTD into an SGML DTD, but it adds
complexity and error-proneness...

> 2. Does anybody support Unicode yet? Frame's character set is odd
> though...

Well, Windows does at the OS level (NT and 2000 properly), NetWare does, Mac
is coming. In the doc game nobody else does much (it's in the next
Interleaf) yet. It'll be everywhere in the next year or so. The reason for
being agitated is that putting Unicode support into Frame is likely a major
piece of surgery. If it ain't done now, the next opportunity is the next
major release, which is, 2-3 years away?

> 3. What's a 'TEX-algorithm H&J'?

Sorry to be obscure. The type 'composing engine' that's in InDesign does
very very nice typesetting by, among other things, considering a group of
lines rather than a single line when working out where to break words in
justified setting. TEX is composition software widely used in math and
science publishing which does this. Donald Knuth, who wrote TEX and put it
in the public domain, believes InDesign uses the TEX H&J (hyphenation &
justification) algorithms. FrameMaker is currently not a typographer's
delight.

> 3. What does FM lack in PostScript printing? Doesn't printing to
> file using the
> Distiller driver work?

Up to a point. Our experience is that getting high-end colour repro out of
Frame is impossible from Windows and possible-but-awkward on Mac. Even
there, it takes a lot of trial and error. Having got the situation under
control, you need to freeze it because the PostScript you get depends on the
driver you're using. The imaging devices that printers (people) use are a
lot more sensitive to 'error' than the stuff in offices.

> 4. Master pages mapped to paratags exists as a FrameScript, an FDK plugin
> shouldn't be hard for both paratags and elements.

Really? I'm obviously not paying attention. Where can I find this
FrameScript?

Thanks for the acute questions.

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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