I have a pal who tells me they use it for book publishing when working on books with hundreds or thousands of pages, and its "better than Word" I am confused by her usage too. Hmmm....
I have a pal who tells me they use it for book publishing when working on books with hundreds or thousands of pages, and its "better than Word" I am confused by her usage too. Hmmm....
Well, I don't think she means that it's better than Word for writing a book, and I wouldn't use Word to layout a book
Quote:
It's not OS X native yet?
No, but AFAIK Adobe is already working on the next version, and that version will be Mac OS X native.
Though many people who are comfortable with FrameMaker do use it as a word processor. Surprisingly (or not) its faster than Word X even running under Classic.
It is, however, not too user-friendly and has a steep learning curve if you want to get full featured use.
yes it does have a steep learning curve. we have had plenty of designers from quark backgrounds that have taken a long time to get to grips with it (i.e. what it can and can't do). if we producing a complex 'designed' document we often design it outside of frame (in indesign say). get the clients approval on the page layout, then build it in frame.
we use it extensively for multiple-media documents -- print, web, pdf etc and its superb for that. though i do miss ventura publisher sometimes!
xml support could be kindly put as 'odd', but the next version should sort that.
there was going to be a 7.5 release, which was a carbon port. but i've heard they have given up on it and saving it for the 8 release (sensible as frame doesn't use any of the adobe standard code base). but a pain as its the only classic app i use...
I'll second othello as a happy FM user for just about everything.
I don't know about recent versions of Word on the Mac, but in my former workplace I frequently found that Word (for windoze) started behaving strangely on long (100+ page) docs. As a matter of fact, OpenOffice was far more stable in this regard.
But OpenOffice had its own limitations. Thus to prepare long RTF documents for print, I had to go through a bizarre ritual that required both Word and OpenOffice, not to mention a lot of tweaking tables, graphics placement, etc. A royal pain.
FM does several things very well. First and foremost, it does what it says it will do....
P.S. Othello: I'm disappointed to hear about 7.5 being canned. When did you hear that?
FM 7 is installed by booting into OS9 then installing, then it can run in classic mode. What happens with new macs that cannot boot into OS9? I've tried installing it under classic but to no avail.
The adobe website has no solution to this. Since macs have been doing this for 5 months, surely there is a solution.
FM 7 is installed by booting into OS9 then installing, then it can run in classic mode. What happens with new macs that cannot boot into OS9? I've tried installing it under classic but to no avail.
The adobe website has no solution to this. Since macs have been doing this for 5 months, surely there is a solution.
P.S. Othello: I'm disappointed to hear about 7.5 being canned. When did you hear that?
from some people at adobe...
7.5 was going to incporate a bug fix release (plus a couple of features) and it was also going to be carbonised so adobe decided to make it a .5 release. plus they wanted to get it out of the door.
but for some reason, a decison on high was made to save the carbon version for the next full point release. the people i spoke to had no clue why. but they did say the carbon port was proving to be...
a problem (due to all the legacy code still in the system from the early versions...)
Comments
Originally posted by dstranathan
Do you guys use it professionally?
Yes, our graphics department is using it.
How are you implementing it?
What do you mean?
Does it run well in OS X?
No problems so far (it runs in Classic, but I guess you know that).
Why do you use it?
It's the only tool that can make our catalogues the way we want to with data from Oracle databases.
Can it replace Word in a pro publishing workflow?
?? Word is not a publishing app and FM is not a word processor.
It's not OS X native yet?
Originally posted by dstranathan
I have a pal who tells me they use it for book publishing when working on books with hundreds or thousands of pages, and its "better than Word" I am confused by her usage too. Hmmm....
Well, I don't think she means that it's better than Word for writing a book, and I wouldn't use Word to layout a book
It's not OS X native yet?
No, but AFAIK Adobe is already working on the next version, and that version will be Mac OS X native.
Originally posted by dstranathan
Can it replace Word in a pro publishing workflow?
Word is a word processor, as the name implies.
FrameMaker does the "framework of a page".
They're two totally different kinds of programs. You wouldn't write a book with Word. You wouldn't write a personal letter with FrameMaker.
FrameMaker, afaik, is most suitable for technical documentations.
It is, however, not too user-friendly and has a steep learning curve if you want to get full featured use.
yes it does have a steep learning curve. we have had plenty of designers from quark backgrounds that have taken a long time to get to grips with it (i.e. what it can and can't do). if we producing a complex 'designed' document we often design it outside of frame (in indesign say). get the clients approval on the page layout, then build it in frame.
we use it extensively for multiple-media documents -- print, web, pdf etc and its superb for that. though i do miss ventura publisher sometimes!
xml support could be kindly put as 'odd', but the next version should sort that.
there was going to be a 7.5 release, which was a carbon port. but i've heard they have given up on it and saving it for the 8 release (sensible as frame doesn't use any of the adobe standard code base). but a pain as its the only classic app i use...
I don't know about recent versions of Word on the Mac, but in my former workplace I frequently found that Word (for windoze) started behaving strangely on long (100+ page) docs. As a matter of fact, OpenOffice was far more stable in this regard.
But OpenOffice had its own limitations. Thus to prepare long RTF documents for print, I had to go through a bizarre ritual that required both Word and OpenOffice, not to mention a lot of tweaking tables, graphics placement, etc. A royal pain.
FM does several things very well. First and foremost, it does what it says it will do....
P.S. Othello: I'm disappointed to hear about 7.5 being canned. When did you hear that?
FM 7 is installed by booting into OS9 then installing, then it can run in classic mode. What happens with new macs that cannot boot into OS9? I've tried installing it under classic but to no avail.
The adobe website has no solution to this. Since macs have been doing this for 5 months, surely there is a solution.
Anyone know?
regards,
Originally posted by MarkL
Does anyone know this one ...
FM 7 is installed by booting into OS9 then installing, then it can run in classic mode. What happens with new macs that cannot boot into OS9? I've tried installing it under classic but to no avail.
The adobe website has no solution to this. Since macs have been doing this for 5 months, surely there is a solution.
Anyone know?
regards,
It installs fine i Classic.
Originally posted by boy_analog
P.S. Othello: I'm disappointed to hear about 7.5 being canned. When did you hear that?
from some people at adobe...
7.5 was going to incporate a bug fix release (plus a couple of features) and it was also going to be carbonised so adobe decided to make it a .5 release. plus they wanted to get it out of the door.
but for some reason, a decison on high was made to save the carbon version for the next full point release. the people i spoke to had no clue why. but they did say the carbon port was proving to be...
a problem (due to all the legacy code still in the system from the early versions...)