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In article <3762@frame.UUCP>, David Fuchs (drf@frame.com) explained
Frame Technology's position regarding the production of PostScript
from FrameMaker.  In summary, his position was that FrameMaker is for
document compilation, and hence need not produce Encapsulated
PostScript.  Further, he states that Frame Technology has never
advertised their product as being able to do this.

First, thanks for the response.  Second, I agree that FM was never
advertised as doing this, and hence the strongest word I used in my
posting was "antisocial".

The key statement in his his response seems to be:
> This is not to say that there aren't some customers who have made use of
> FrameMaker's PostScript output in ways we hadn't planned for. 
People will always do this.  If we as a site have invested in 10 FM
licenses (which we have), it is because we thought we were buying a
versatile and well-made product (which it is).  Two aspects of that
product are: 
 - it has a pretty good graphics editor
 - it produces PostScript
An obvious possibility then is that the graphics editor could be used
to produce PostScript diagrams, subsequently to be imported into a
different system (in our case LaTeX).  Note that we did not *expect*
this to be an absolutely smooth process, because, as David rightly
says, it was not advertised as a feature.

However the realities of life are such that all PostScript --- even
that designed to be printed --- may have to be processed in some way.
Examples I can think of are doing "n-up" printing and page
re-ordering.  The PostScript language and the structuring conventions
were designed exactly with this in mind.  There are bound to be others
that I have not thought of --- nobody can anticipate all the
possibilities.

Hence, it would seem only sensible for a company like Frame Tech. to
design its product so that it can be used in cooperation with other
tools, ie for it to be in some way "open".  Having your PostScript
importable seems to me to be one of the smallest ways in which they
can do this.  Indeed, in 1.3 things *could* be imported with only
minor effort (the %%BoundingBox values had to be edited).  Clearly,
you have already done this to some degree (eg, your pages can be
reordered) ... why not go the whole way?

To me this just makes sound business sense: your customers are
happier, and some of them (here, mostly LaTeX users) get to use your
product who otherwise wouldn't.  Your position seems to be almost
encouraging us to go out and buy a different package for this purpose;
surely you want as many FM users as possible?

Arguing that other products don't do it really doesn't wash: as
Sebastian Rahtz has pointed out, some do (or get darned close).
Anyhow, even if they didn't, wouldn't this give your product an edge? 

> Finally, I must take personal exception to remarks about "antisocial"
> [...] behavior.  
This was not intended as a personal slight.  But I still feel it's
antisocial to say "we'll take anybody's (encapsulated) PostScript but we
won't let anybody else take ours".  It isn't that hard to make EPSF;
surely one option to output a single page in that format wouldn't be
too hard to provide?  Then again, I may not need it now that a fix has
been placed on the Adobe server...

Mario Wolczko

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