🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, don't take me 100% seriously all the time.

But, what I meant and stand by is this:

If you have a FrameMaker 7 workflow today. If FrameMaker 7 is never improved, that workflow will be good for the next 5+years.

Now, you might not be aboe to upgrade to MS Windows 2005, agreed. Or Office 2005. But that's not the point. You can still move along as speedily as you can today and get your job done.

I agree, corporate pressures might require Office 2005, or something else. If that becomes true, at that time, those implementing the corporate plan have to make some choices. Build-in a migration from FrameMaker 7 or create an exemption.

It is ridiculous to expect technical writers to have the same computing needs as a secretary, an engineering manager, a corporate lawyer, etc. UPS management might get a company car, but chances are it's not a brown package car because the needs are different.

I agree. InDesign is new and cool. It is one of very few native Adobe products (is PostScript the only other one?).

My issue with InDesign is its overhead. it's slow. Ponderous. Heavy. Agreed, it has some good features, and might grow more . . . more in every way.

My fear, with one "text" tool is that it becomes a generalist tool, much like Microsoft Word, great for nothing, adequate for everything.

Finally, I would note that we are dealing with different kinds of "text" here. I perceive a difference between DTP layout tools, like Quark, PageMaker, and InDesign, and tools like FrameMaker with long-document specialty. While some tools, like Ventura, try to do it all, I find I really don't want the burden of those features I don't use. I like the specialist features that, ultimately, have kept 10-year-old code very much in the game. I would much rather Adobe sharpen FrameMaker's focus than dull it with a generalist approach.

As always, with cheers and grins,

Sean