RE: Dov's help, Shooting the messenger, Fruitless posts

["Steve Whitlatch" <swhitlat@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm Sorry to see anyone from Adobe discontinue their participation in a
FrameMaker newsgroup or mailing list. It seems when the subject of FrameMaker on
Linux was breached, Dov had had enough.

Free software on desktop Linux is pretty good, for free, and it's not easy to
beat free. It may be that Linux users expect a lot, and it may be that they
expect it mostly for free, which, of course, would be a source of some trouble
for any plan Adobe might devise to market FrameMaker for Linux.

I think FrameMaker is great. It's especially nice to bring XML into FrameMaker
and take advantage of FrameMaker's wonderful formatting capabilities. FrameMaker
is my choice for unstructured documents.

As for speculation about FrameMaker's future, I am reminded of the remark made
famous by the ex-CEO of Intel (Andy Grove?), something about the paranoid being
the only ones who survive. I think he was talking about the information
technology business. Another thing he said, something about the value of
intellectual property, was that the value of whatever can be digitized will go
down.

It is good to talk about the future of FrameMaker. People have reason to be
concerned and do not warrant scolding for doing so. This mailing list seems like
it would be an appropriate place to talk about FrameMaker, it's future, and
pretty much all FrameMaker issues, no?

Things can change, but for now there are strong reasons to believe that
FrameMaker is not being actively, vigorously developed. FrameMaker is good for
what it does now (unstructured), and it's my best choice for PostScript/PDF
composition of imported XML. I would like to see some of what I found to be its
difficulties with structured documents resolved, but I don't expect that anytime
soon. If interested, you can read my notes and a description of some of the
difficulties I encountered with structured FrameMaker (direct link) at:
http://www.getnet.net/~swhitlat/DocBook/Frame_Project_Readme.html

Or you can go to http://www.getnet.net/~swhitlat/ and follow the DocBook link on
the left to download the entire structured application.

Steve Whitlatch


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-framers@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-framers@xxxxxxxxx]On Behalf
> Of Larry Kollar
> Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 3:37 PM
> To: TechComm Dood
> Cc: framers@xxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Dov's help, Shooting the messenger, Fruitless posts
>
>
> >> Color me unconvinced that simple speculation was enough to precipitate
> >> Dov's leaving the list. ...
> >
> > The speculation has been going on for years, and I can't remember a
> > week in the past year or so in which the question hasn't been brought
> > up on this list. Sure he could filter it out, as I do, but my guess is
> > that Dov's received more than his fair share of private e-mails about
> > it as well.
>
> Maybe I'm just not as sensitive to the ebb & flow, but it seems like
> weeks go by without any serious speculation on the list. It comes and
> goes; this time it was worse than usual but another list was created
> to siphon off part of the chatter & it was dying down.
>
> Sending private email to Dov about it would be bad manners, for sure,
> just like when people address technical questions directly to Dov
> instead of just posting to the list & getting an answer from whoever.
> I've seen the latter for a fact, and winced each time it happened.
>
>
> >> ... if an "independent user-oriented mailing
> >> list" isn't the place to talk about the future of a product, then
> >> I'm stumped for a more appropriate venue.
> >
> > Well, I doubt people in your lunchroom like to hear people whining
> > about their car repairs or impending divorces either. Same scenario,
> > only this is online.
>
> There's no lunchroom here, and I don't see how it's the same scenario
> in any case. It's more like the lunchroom operators dropping a dish
> that a few people really really like, and making vague statements
> instead of communicating with those people who want to have that dish
> available. The nearest restaurant, Word Diner, is too far away to get
> there and back during lunch & serves lousy food anyway. But I guess
> if we don't like it, we're supposed to just shut up & not discuss it.
>
> Co-workers have complained about car repairs, BTW, and I've welcomed
> that because I know where *not* to take my car....
>
>
> >> A lot of the Mac-specific
> >> chatter already moved to Paul Findon's list, BTW, and the threads
> >> here & on FrameUsers were already showing signs of winding down &
> >> would have been naught but background noise by next week.
> >
> > Possibly, but that's not an excuse to warrant the behavior, is it?
>
> What behavior? Talking about FrameMaker on a FrameMaker list?
>
> >> And, I would point out, a simple comment from Adobe PR -- "we have
> >> shut down MacOS development for FrameMaker, but intend to continue
> >> developing Windows and Solaris versions for the foreseeable future"
> >> for example -- would have killed all speculation.
> >
> > There was a press release.
>
> Which said, in essence, "we're no longer selling Frame on MacOS." No
> reassurance for users of the other two OSes. As (I think) Paul pointed
> out last week, Adobe made a very public commitment to port "flagship
> products" to OSX -- if Adobe intends to keep Frame going for Solaris
> and XP, and knows it, why not make it explicit? (Oops, I just typed
> something that could be construed as speculation about Frame's future
> again, and on a FrameMaker list no less. So sorry.)
>
> --
> Larry Kollar, Senior Technical Writer, ARRIS
> "Content creators are the engine that drives
> value in the information life cycle."
>     -- Barry Schaeffer, on XML-Doc
>
>
> ** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx **
> ** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **
>


** To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx **
** with "unsubscribe framers" (no quotes) in the body.   **