Whither FrameMaker? or, should they switch?

[Deporodh <deporodh@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Framers,

This is Deborah Snavely, posting from an alternate address.
Please respond to this address on this question, directly
since I'm getting only the digest here in an effort to
manage the Yahoo mail account.

A client asked me a multipart question about FrameMaker. I
know some of the answer from the community's long and
heated discussions about it: what is FrameMaker's future at
Adobe's hands? Has Frame become a second-class citizen in
their lineup? That's the first part. (I'm not bothering to
subscribe to the other list for this effort but I know
perfectly well that at least two Frame managers lurk there,
which I consider a hopeful sign.) On the other hand, no one
seems to have pounded the existence and market of Frame
into their marketing-weenies' thick heads and rosy visions,
so that's an iffy question. By way of hanging out a
windsock, what's your current impressions on that front?

Second part question is much simpler: if one were to
migrate a training department's publications to another DTP
product, what might be suitable? InDesign? QuarkXpress?
Anything else? (Whatever it is should be available for the
Macintosh platform and support it well.)

My own first take on the question was that Adobe is still
digesting its acquisition of Frame Technology -- look at
how long it took them to change PageMaker's flavor from
Aldus to Adobe. 

My second take was that, for complex training manuals of
500 pages and more with TOC and multiple indexes per book,
nothing on the market except perhaps Ventura and Interleaf
are anything like appropriate for the size and complexity
involved. And their trainers already know how to use
FrameMaker. 

And finally, my own question to you all: if you had
FrameMaker files & books that had started life as Frame 3
files on the NeXT platform that used PostScript code for
graphics (NeXT used Display PS onscreen), and had now been
migrated to Frame 5.5 files on Windows NT 4.0 with OLE
graphics, would you attribute such things as the regular
and involuntary breaking of flows to the ghosts of the past
buried in the files' code? Or is Adobe's stated non-support
of OLE (per Frame/Windows tech support 1/14/2000) a more
likely suspect for the fragility of these files, which
incorporate an average of 20 half-page OLE graphics per
file in the book?

It's a weird kind of question, but then it's been a weird
kind of contract! I know what my advice is and I've given
it to them, but I said I'd ask the community about the
comparative products question, and it's a question worth
updating my knowledge for.

Thanks in advance. 

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