Re: FrameMaker's Future

[Paul Findon <pfindon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 13 Jan 2005, at 17:28, Stevens, Ananda ((GE Healthcare)) wrote:

> It will be very, very interesting to see what Pages's capabilities 
> are. I doubt that Pages 1.0 will be close to what Frame users would 
> want to switch to, but I would not be surprised if Apple is thinking 
> about using that as a step towards a Frame replacement.

This was intended for another list, but I'll post it here now that 
you've mentioned Pages. Technical users out there, please bear with me.

Pages didn't turn out to be a FrameMaker replacement, but it does have 
some interesting features: graphics that flow with text, paragraph and 
character styles, tables, table of contents, running headers and 
footers, bookmarks (x-refs that work in PDFs?), hypertext links, 
multiple columns, footnotes, and so on. Import and export looks good. 
No indexing or variables, but then it is only version 1. No doubt it 
will mature over time. Maybe there'll be a Pages Pro?

Several people have commented that Pages looks very much like the old 
Pages app for NeXTSTEP, made by a company called Pages, which also 
allowed you to change the entire document on-the-fly with themes. The 
original Pages sold for $695. iWork, which  includes Keynote and Pages, 
retails at $79.

I've just checked one of Apple's more recent user manuals, G5 iMac, and 
apart from the lack of indexing, Pages may have all the functionality 
necessary to produce a typical Apple user manual. I'm intrigued to see 
if the Mac mini, iPod shuffle, or iWork manuals will be made in Pages. 
My guess is that Steve Jobs would love to get his documentation 
department out the Classic environment even if it means sacrifices.

I can't see any templates for user manuals. Perhaps you can create your 
own? And there's no mention of manuals in the list of uses (I don't 
expect any mention of technical publications at this level.)

In some ways, Pages looks to be a replacement for PageMaker. Small 
businesses, clubs, groups, education people, and so on who want to 
knock together a professional looking document quickly but don't want 
to use Word or InDesign.

Imagine having one theme for a printed document, then selecting your 
Web theme and have the entire document automatically reformat itself 
ready for the Web?

The ability to export HTML and the hypertext links make me wonder if 
Pages can be used as a basic Web page creation tool?

I guess we'll know a lot more on 22 of this month.

> I just took a look at ArborText's web site. This sounds like the 
> product that FrameMaker could have (and should have) been by now: a 
> write-once, publish-anywhere system.

Perhaps Adobe will buy it?

Paul


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