Re: 5.5.6 beta claims [Was: Interfaces, usability and Adobe]

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Once again, the "rumor-mongering conspiracy theorist" label that Brad (and
others) keep pinning on me is cast in doubt. I was told by my source that
there were 300 items on the list. Maybe further analysis pared it down to
100 (still a huge number). But the other information Trish provided below
gibes with what I"ve heard to be the current status. The problem the client
had, as I understand it, was that it takes about 1-1/2 man-days to write up
each bug report to Adobe's satisfaction, and the client was not willing to
spend that much time on it. So, they've pared it down to a smaller number (I
heard 25) at Adobe's insistence.

On the other hand, it might not even be the same client I was talking about.

And, as always, Adobe tries to classify some bugs as "enhanement requests",
even though they're bugs (e.g., the failure to properly justify run-in
paragraphs). My experience is that you have to go round and round with Adobe
(taking considerable time) before they'll reclassify a report from
enhancement request to bug.

Clearly, if 5.5.6 is just weeks away, fixes for the bugs Trish describes
below won't be in it. The likely outcome will be that Adobe only fixes those
bugs in a private release that goes only to that client, and the rest of us
go begging.
****************************************************************************
At 01:38 PM 10/1/98 -0400, Trish Mudgett wrote:
>   
>Hello,
>
>As promised, an update on the "300 significant bugs" claim
>launched in an earlier email (see attached).
>
>A 3rd party contacted me asking me to "back off" my email
>in response to Dan because he was providing "factual" 
>information.  It took a great deal of digging by multiple
>parties within Adobe, but I think we've tracked Dan's
>information back to the source.  The client involved is
>holding (Adobe has not seen it) a 100-item list which they
>want to prioritize.  They have already extracted 11 critical
>issues and forwarded those to us (we got that list quite 
>some time ago, but even some of those items are enhancement
>requests).
>
>So all that is to say, it's under control.  We're now in
>touch with this client to see if they will kindly let us
>review the list to see if anything unique is on it that
>hasn't already been addressed in the 5.5.6 product.
>
>On a related note, I have received a number of direct
>inquiries about more detailed information for the 5.5.6
>product.  I'll get to those as time permits, but please
>be patient.  Honestly, I haven't gotten around to installing
>the released version on my own machine!
>
>Regards,
>
>Trish Mudgett
>Manager, Technical Support
>Adobe Systems, Inc.
>
>	>Dan Emory wrote
>     	>Adobe did not widely distribute the Beta, and many of
>   	>the major license-holders didn't get it. Late in the 
>   	>Beta phase, Adobe, under pressure, reluctantly added 
>   	>more major license holders to the Beta program. The 
>   	>result was that one testing lab that has nearly
>   	>100 gigabytes of existing FrameMaker documents 
>   	>(including many FM+SGML documents) found more than
>   	>300 significant bugs. These were all bugs in
>   	>existing features, most of which were extant and 
>   	>working properly in V5.1.x. They were uncovered 
>   	>using Frame documents prepared with earlier
>   	>releases, which were opened in the V5.6 Beta 
>   	>and then heavily flogged. Some of the major license
>   	>holders had to go all the way to the top in Adobe 
>   	>before it reluctantly agreed to fix all of those 
>   	>bugs in the production release. That probably
>   	>explains why it's a couple of months late.
>   
>   Trish Mudgett replied:
>   Hogwash.  The quantity of beta testers increased only
>   marginally through the beta cycles of 5.5.6 (perhaps
>   an increase overall of 10%).  From the beginning this
>   release was slated to fix known crashes and also release
>   a small number of enhancements. We purposely limited our
>   selection of beta sites because quite frankly, we found
>   a lot of 5.5 customers took weeks to install beta product
>   and then gave us little or no feedback. This time around
>   we focused on previous beta sites who had installed and
>   run the product and supplied a lot of feedback.
>   
>   I really don't care whether Dan's posting privelages are
>   active, or not. I was in the habit in the final weeks of 
>   his posts of just deleting them without reading them.  I
>   personally found many of his posts to be founded in myth
>   and rumore, but presented as fact.  Dan does offer value
>   in the posts he makes in response to direct product 
>   inquiries.  Perhaps he'd like to join the Frame TS team!? :)
>   
>   As before, I invite Dan to reply with some substantiation of 
>   his claims about the beta site he refers to above.  So who 
>   is this account who found 300 bugs??
>   
>   In the event Dan can produce an account name or contact for
>   me to check into this, I'm more than happy to provide more
>   detail to the list.
>   
>   As for all the other text about the GUI and/or version 6
>   speculation... I can't be drawn into that one since there's
>   nothing public to be said on the topic.
>   
>   Cheers,
>   
>   Trish Mudgett
>   Manager, Technical Support
>   Adobe Systems, Inc.
>   
>      
>
>
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Dan Emory
Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design
and Database Publishing Specialists

Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971
E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208
Huntington Beach, CA 92646


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