Re: PROFOUND AND SCARY OBSERVATIONS [Fwd: Framemaker isperfect, therefor it's dead]

[Chuck Hastings <cwh2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, Framers, I'll try this another way.

I did NOT send an ATTACHMENT.  I FORWARDED
a message.  And it went out through my daily-updated
Norton AntiVirus.  Not to worry.

Apparently Richard Comb's' software defenses are
unable to distinguish a forwarded message from an
attachment.  Bill Briggs seems to have something
different in place, in his system.

I was unaware that FORWARDING emails to the
Free Framers list was also an illegal operation.  Is it,
really?

This time around I just EMBEDDED my son's message,
instead of forwarding it.  I hope that any of you who
received it OK the first time will forgive the repetition.

Richard, you're obviously quite free to  <snip>  this
message also, if you're moved to do so.


Chuck Hastings      cwh2@earthlink.net

Vintage Silicon Logic         San José and Seattle



============================================


Richard Combs wrote:

Chuck Hastings wrote something that arrived with an attachment:

<snipped all; deleted message and attachment>

This list permits attachments? Now, that's profoundly scary.

;-)

Richard


============================================


Hello Framers,

My son Steve has expertise in software and IT far
beyond mine.  He was an MSWord developer at
Microsoft for six years, and in the half decade or so
since he left he has converted all computers  (many)
that he and his wife own and use to Linux.  That
may just indicate something . . .

I think his observations are potentially quite useful
to the FrameMaker community, and so I'm forwarding
them as he suggested.  He didn't see my wisecrack
about how there may soon be an opportunity for an
open-source Linux-based program to be called
FlameMaker, but quite a few of you reacted to my
jibe in various ways.


Chuck Hastings      cwh2@earthlink.net

Vintage Silicon Logic         San José and Seattle


============================================


"Steve R. Hastings" wrote:

> Dad: if you think your FrameMaker discussion mailing list would be
> interested in this, please forward it to them.
>
> Cas Tuyn noted that FrameMaker is essentially perfect, and it's so
> difficult for Adobe to sell upgrades that Adobe may simply stop selling
> FrameMaker.
>
> The top reason I now prefer free, open source software to proprietary
> software is: no one can ever take it away from you.  The people working
> on a piece of free software aren't trying to make money.  They don't
> make decisions based on how much money people will pay.  They just want
> the software to be good.
>
> With free software, you don't have to be a software engineer to be able
> to get features added; the development team will probably add a feature
> if you request it and it's a good idea.  And, if your business
> absolutely requires a particular feature, you can always hire a software
> engineer to add that feature, if no one else will.  (And if anyone in
> the world adds a new feature, the rest of the world gets it for free!)
>
> So, in the free software world, as long as there are people who care
> about the program--care enough either to write code, or to hire someone
> to write code--that program isn't dead.  That's why I would sooner run a
> business using free software, than using proprietary software.
>
> It used to be true that you had to be a software geek to understand and
> use free software, but it's no longer true.  The best of the free
> software is about as good as the best of the proprietary software, at
> least for the most common purposes.
>
> Getting down to specifics, is there any free software that can fill the
> shoes of FrameMaker?  I am handicapped here because I don't know much
> about FrameMaker, but here are the ones I think might be of interest.
>
> OpenOffice.org Writer: This is usually viewed as a replacement for
> Microsoft Word, not as a replacement for FrameMaker, but I read an
> article that claims that it is more like FrameMaker than it is like
> Word.  Here's the article, so you can read it yourself:
>
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7120&mode=thread&order=0
>
> OpenOffice.org software is available for Windows, Linux, and even
> Mac OS X (but it's tricky to install for Mac).  You can get
> OpenOffice.org software from the OpenOffice.org web site:
>
> http://www.openoffice.org/
>
> KWord: the KDE project's word processor, KWord, is advertised as a
> FrameMaker-like word processor.  It's frame-based.  You need to be
> running KDE to use it, so it is limited to platforms (such as Linux)
> that support KDE.  In other words, no Windows version is available.
> (Yet, anyway.)
>
> http://www.koffice.org/kword/
>
> LyX: a friendly, graphical front-end for TeX, a system for typesetting.
> LyX is supposed to make it easy to write highly structured documents,
> and the styles control how everything looks.  So you would make sure all
> the sections are tagged correctly (title page, headings, body text,
> whatever) and it will all look very consistent when printed.
>
> http://www.lyx.org/
>
> Vex: an XML editor, intended to be word processor-like and intended to
> be used with DocBook for authoring documents.  There are other XML
> editors out there as well; I haven't really tested any of them, so I
> just picked this one as an example.
>
> http://vex.sourceforge.net/
>
> In case you are not familiar with DocBook:
>
> http://www.docbook.org/
>
> http://xml.oreilly.com/news/dontlearn_0701.html
>
> In closing, I'll also note that even if Adobe kills off FrameMaker, you
> don't have to stop using it.  Lots of old software is still around in
> common use.
> --
> Steve R. Hastings    "Vita est"
> steve@hastings.org   http://www.blarg.net/~steveha


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