FrameMaker Release 7.2

[Daniel Emory <danemory7224@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > But I'm afraid that XML support in FrameMaker is
> still joking
> > non-7-bit people.
> 
Fundamentally, the Adobe release does not offer enough
detail regarding the extent of the support for XML
Schema and XSLT to know whether it represents a small
or big step in the right direction. And, as far as the
"built-in conversion tools" for converting
unstructured docs to structured ones conforming to
some pre-specified target EDD, DTD or Schema, I
suspect they're not capable of much more than putting
lipstick on the pig, particularly if the pig (i.e.,
the unstructured docs to be converted) were designed
and implemented well before any requirement for
conversion to structured docs was seen as a future
requirement. In such documents it is often found that
a given paragraph tag, character tag, marker type or
variable name must, in different structural contexts, 
be mapped to different elements in the target
EDD/DTD/schema. If this problem of one-to-many
relationships is not addressed by the new conversion
tools, then there's not much added value. In other
words, if all the conversion tools do is fill in the
first column of the conversion table, not much has
been gained.

It's also unclear what the new XSLT support is all
about. Can it, for instance, convert EDD Element
Paragraph tags and format rules which modify that
paragraph tag in different contexts, does the new XSLT
support permit you to produce style sheets (cascading
style sheets or XSL style sheets) derived directly
from the EDD-defined  element paragraph tags, and
format rules, even when some formatting instructions
are derived from element attributes?. 

There's even more to it than that, including XML
formatting objects, and whether FrameMaker's support
for Schema is robust enough. And what about Unicode
support?

The most fundamental question is whether FrameMaker
7.2 will deter Frameusers from moving to something
like the extremely robust Arbotext solution? I doubt
it based on what limited information has been released
by Adobe. In fact, if it were a major step forward
toward full XML support, I'm sure the new version
would not be another point release.

What it all comes down to is whether 7.2 is the end of
the line, at least for several years, or whether Adobe
intends to go much farther in future releases within
the next year or so. 


Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
DW Emory <danemory7224@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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