Re: InDesign and Frame

[Marcus Carr <mrc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

framers-digest wrote:

> If Adobe were seen promoting Frame strongly, perhaps its adoption would
> become more ubiquitous. I understand that the market for FrameMaker is much
> smaller than for Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign/GoLive/Acrobat/etc., but I'd
> bet that most of Frame's market remains untapped. There are plenty of people
> using MS Word who should be using Frame.

Although I believe that it's completely futile to speculate on how Adobe should
conduct their business, I'll add my two cents worth anyway.

My understanding is that InDesign is basically a kernel, capable of supporting any
number of plug-ins used for a variety of tasks. One might speculate that code for
complex text formatting, SGML/XML, complex mathematics, external objects in a
variety of media, etc will all eventually be catered for. Think about it - how many
times do Adobe want to write text handlers for different products, when 80 percent
of the functionality between applications is common? I believe that it's possible
that Frame might eventually become a Kernel configuration containing "a nominal
collection of tools for the well-rounded publishing professional" rather than a
standalone application. Whether Dov knows about this or not is irrelevant -
confirmation from Adobe would result in upheaval within the established customer
base, so his professionalism would likely prevent him from saying anything.

Given that the creation of InDesign likely required coding from the ground up,
there will be little or no baggage and the modular handlers will be much more
maintainable than the established and fairly monolithic applications it will be
capable of replacing. Adobe didn't get where they are by because they're dopes - my
guess is that they're stocking another basket for us. They have surely considered
the potential of being able to kill more than just Quark with this approach,
especially if they were able to quickly react to other tools coming on the market.


--
Regards,

Marcus Carr                      email:  mrc@allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
Allette Systems (Australia)      www:    http://www.allette.com.au
___________________________________________________________________
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
       - Einstein



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