Re: Adobe Certified Newsletter -- notice about FrameMaker

[Paul Findon <pfindon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 19 Jul 2005, at 18:24, Allen wrote:

> I'm finding that many of the jobs I'm interviewing for want Word. I'm 
> starting a short term contract at (big Internet company) and they want 
> it all in Word. I mentioned the instability of the template in Word 
> and the response was, "Yeah, but we need it in Word so it can be used 
> in foreign countries."  I guess they never heard of RTF.

Funny that. For the last 15 years I've worked with writers, 
translators, and printers in "foreign countries" around the world, 
including the United States, and all using FrameMaker on the Mac. Works 
a treat for Japanese, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, 
Norwegian, Italian, Russian, and so on - even English.

> But if FrameMaker is toast, what is everyone looking toward? None of 
> the XML based stuff seems really usable. Is it back to LaTex?

Just like the legions of businesses who still earn a living using 
QuarkXPress 3.2 or 4.x, PageMaker 6.5, Word 5, and Illustrator 8, we're 
continuing with FrameMaker in Mac OS 9. Just because Adobe stopped 
selling it doesn't mean we can no longer use it. It's fast, rock solid, 
most of the bugs have been ironed out, and most important of all, it 
does the job. None of the companies I know that use Mac FrameMaker in 
the U.S., Europe, or Japan have changed to anything else or have any 
plans to do so. Don't be fooled by the Mac media and ranting hobbyists 
- not all Mac users have switched to Mac OS X. Millions haven't.

Personally, I find it somwhat ironic that Adobe no longer has an 
authoring and publishing solution for the Mac, the platform that gave 
Adobe its start 20 years ago when Jobs and Warnock worked together to 
bring us the LaserWriter. But that was "Old Adobe." It's a shame "New 
Adobe" and Jobs can't resolve the regrettable predicament Adobe has 
created.

FWIW, I just received some blurb for Adobe's CS2 that says it's a 
"combined design platform for print, Web, and mobile." With a combined 
development history of over 50 years, you'd think at least one of the 
included apps could do cross-references by now. Twenty years after the 
DTP revolution kicked off, is it really too much to ask? Word can do 
'em. Perhaps InDesign will when QuarkXPress does.

Paul


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