Re: FrameMaker's Future

[Robyn Chittister <robyn.chittister@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I can answer that in a way. ArborText does not have any type of 
automated conversion tool. The purchasing company would either need to 
create one, or have an ArborText consultant do all of the conversions. 
This is a major reason why we didn't switch to ArborText. Another reason 
was the lack of PS/PDF support. Although AroberText claims that Epic can 
be printed to or saved as PDF, the process is longer and more 
error-prone than the FrameMaker 7.0 process to do the same.

As we had already built a conversion tool for plain FrameMaker to 
structured FrameMaker, the ArborText reps said that the best way to 
convert all of the documents would be to first convert them to 
structured Frame, save as SGML or XML, then back them into ArborText.

Now, this was just over 2 years ago, however, the reps did not say, even 
when asked, that there was a straightforward path from plain Frame to 
ArborText, nor was one in the works. Of course, 2 years is an eon in 
tech, but how much impetus does ArborText have when its largest 
competitor is putting itself out of business?

We've been hearing for years that FrameMaker was going to "go away." 
However, there aren't any plans to change authoring tools. We've put a 
great investment into FrameMaker and XML, even writing our own XML to 
XHTML converter. Our largest concern at this point is that Adobe is no 
longer providing support for fonts on UNIX. They are also apparently 
going away from selling the font package that we use for documentation, 
which we initially chose about a decade ago because they were standard 
fonts on UNIX. Although we're a mostly Windows shop, there are some 
groups who must work with UNIX or Linux for various reasons.

Carol J. Elkins wrote:

> Paul, do you happen to know what the migration path might be for 
> Frame->Epic for nonstructured docs? I've made an appointment to speak 
> to an ArborText rep, but if she doesn't know FrameMaker and I don't 
> know Epic, it will be difficult to get an accurate feel for what might 
> be involved in converting large libraries. If docs need to exit Frame 
> as SGML or XML, then Epic won't be an option for my business.
>
> Carol
>
> At 10:45 AM 1/13/2005 -0800, you wrote:
>
> > > relationships, attributes, quantifiers (+,*,?,%)) Are there other
> > > products out there that will convert XML to print with the power that
> > > FrameMaker provides? (Different master pages according to element, 
> > apply
> > > different styles based on relation of XML element, book building, page
> > > numbering)
> >
> > > A couple days ago was the first time I had heard of Arbortext, I 
> > haven't
> > > had a chance to look further into the product. Does anyone know if it
> > > will do what I describe above?
> >
> > Epic can format XML, use different master pages (page sets, in FOSI) 
> > depending on element, and use context to handle even the same element 
> > differently through FOSI and, I think, XSL/FO stylesheets.
> >
> > But not without significant investment in those stylesheets.
> >
> > ------
> > Paul Nagai
> >
> > Tsunami relief portal:
> > http://www.networkforgood.org/
> >
> >
> > ** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx **
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>
>
> *****************************************
> Carol J. Elkins        A Written Word
> Making Information Understandable
> Phone: 719-948-3773
> mailto:celkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.awrittenword.com
> *****************************************
>
>
>
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--
- Robyn
robyn.chittister@xxxxxxxxxx

*******************************
Robyn Chittister
Oracle DocTools
office: 925.755.3622
*******************************

The above are the opinions of one Robyn Chittister. Had they been the opinions of Oracle, the i's and g's would have been lowercase and italicized, and maybe some of the other letters would have been miXeD CaSE, italicized, and in Century Gothic, because the Century typefaces are renowned for their readability and the word Gothic is just plain cool.


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