RE: FrameMaker Visibility

["Hedley Finger (EPA)" <Hedley.Finger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some months ago I sounded off on Adobe's failure to promote FrameMaker along
similar lines to the topic threads 'FrameMaker', 'Another Direction', and
'Adobe Magazine and FM'.  This outburst was occasioned when I received a
number of separate mailouts from Adobe Australia consisting of a promo for a
graphics package (including a poster of how different people used the family
of products -- not one was a technical writer, academic, or book editor), a
copy of the Asia-Pacific edition of Adobe Magazine, and a flyer for a series
of roadshows later in 1999.  None of these promotions mentioned FrameMaker
at all.

The trouble with surveys that ask what tools you are using is that they are
a closed loop that doesn't help the marketing wizards to predict the future.
What about asking customers what KINDS OF DOCUMENTS they are producing, WHAT
PROPORTION EACH CONTRIBUTES to their total production, HOW THEY INTEND TO
DELIVER THEM to their readership, and WHAT COMMON PROBLEMS ARE NOT ADDRESSED
by their current tools.  That's the way to discover unmet needs, a skill
that most big corporations lack and small startups, with a canny nose for
niche products and minimal obstructive overheads and bureaucracy, are very
good at.  Just witness how many large corporations think product development
consists of buying small companies that have the imagination and
adaptability to exploit market opportunities.  Adobe is no different -- how
much of their current line-up of products started elsewhere?

So, if you sent my proposed survey to academic, commercial, and government
book publishers, you would find that 100 percent of them publish books, that
books constitute 100 percent of their output, and that 93.6789 percent of
them (facetious statistic!) use Quark Xpress, and 93.6789 percent of them
would all really like a good table editor, and ToC, LoF, LoT, and Index
compilers.  Duh!

That said, have you downloaded the InDesign literature from
<http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/indesign/main.html> lately?  Did you know
InDesign can do inline and anchored frames?  And that it is modular,
consisting of a core supplemented by many plug-ins?  And that it is
extensible via a rich API and third-party plug-ins?  And that it allows
unlimited master pages?  There is much, much more that sounds very much like
a product that we all know and love.

I would be absolutely ecstatic to find InDesign and FrameMaker converging.
But that's no reason for Adobe to hold back on promoting FrameMaker in the
interim.

--
Regards,
Hedley Finger   Technical Writer

Ericsson Australia Pty Ltd
StarHUB NMOSS Project
Level 34.66   Melbourne Central Tower
Elizabeth Street   Melbourne VIC 3000   Australia
Tel. +61 3 9301 6214   Cell. +61 412 461 558   Fax. +61 3 9301 6199
Email. hedley.finger@ericsson.com.au

Hand Holding Projects Pty Ltd
28 Regent Street   Burwood VIC 3125   Australia
Tel. +61 3 9809 1229   Cell. +61 412 461 558   Fax. +61 3 9809 1326
Email. hfinger@handholding.com.au

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	edunn@transport.bombardier.com [SMTP:edunn@transport.bombardier.com]
> Sent:	Friday, August 06, 1999 5:52 AM
> To:	John Posada; Framers@FrameUsers.com
> Subject:	Re: FrameMaker
> 
> 
> 
> Wonderfully stated John.
> To those of you who think that the complaints on this list are whiny, well
> I'm
> afraid I think you're way off base. I think only that until now no one has
> put
> it as well as John.
> I personally do not use Illustrator, or Photoshop, but our illustrators
> do. I
> and others dabble with PDF and Acrobat. These three software packages all
> play
> second fiddle to FM when it comes to the production flow of the manuals.
> Yet
> they are given all the space in the Adobe magazine. The grumbles come
> because
> many FM users want to know how to best merge these other packages with
> their use
> of FM but are always left high and dry when it comes to examples.
> Before FM was Adobe we used Illustrator with FM and experienced a number
> of
> problems. We found workarounds. Now that FM is Adobe, one could expect
> that if
> Adobe is serious about FM, other than as second rate stable income
> provider,
> Adobe themselves could provide some good workarounds and tricks themselves
> and
> promote FM along with the others as part (the most important part) of a
> workflow. I say the most important part because we could replace
> Illustrator or
> Photoshop with a number of other programs, but replacing FM would be fatal
> to a
> number of our manual production operations.
> 
> Eric L. Dunn
> 
> 
> 
> 
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>     1999 FrameUsers Conference: http://www.FrameUsers.com/conference/
>      Dr. John Warnock Keynote on Adobe and the Future of FrameMaker
> _________________________________________________________________________

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