25 Years of FrameMaker: Why This Product Still “Rocks” After A Quarter Of A Century

April 7, 2011 Blog 33 Comments

by Maxwell Hoffmann, Director, Document Globalization Practice at Globalization Partners International This month (April 2011) FrameMaker turns 25, just 3 months after the launch of a major new release, Adobe FrameMaker 10. Over the years, FrameMaker has attracted many nicknames, from “industrial strength publishing” to “Word on steroids.” Even phrases like “too good to be true” have been associated with the product. None of these monikers have ever accurately categorized or captured the essence of this dynamic product. I was employee number 66 at Frame Technology (the company that invented Read the full article…

Making The Move To Creating Structured XML: An Interview with Thomas Aldous

March 1, 2009 Blog 1 Comment

Scott: Thomas, thanks for agreeing to chat with us a little today about making the move to structured XML. For those readers who don’t yet know who you are, tell us a little about yourself and your experience in the content industry. Thomas: Thanks, Scott. I am a principal owner of a company called Integrated Technologies, better known as InTech. We began as a UNIX training company back in 1989. Within a few years, we made major inroads in the Engineering, Financial and Telecom industries. One of our first financial Read the full article…

Making the Case for DITA, The Unlikely Demise of Adobe FrameMaker, and Finally, XSLT for MS Word

August 6, 2008 Blog No Comments

The Content Wrangler has the dish on structured writing. Is DITA dead? Is FrameMaker defunct? Has MS Word actually survived the XML wars and emerged as a user-friendly XML authoring tool? It all started with an article by Scott Abel calling on all DITA evangelists to promote use cases and real-world examples designed to help folks understand the DITA value proposition. The article sparked an interesting conversation about whether DITA will–or should–survive, while at the same time the demise of FrameMaker is still being discussed. We should remind you that Read the full article…

Featured Group: Content Transforms Using XSLT, C++ and Java

March 13, 2008 Blog No Comments

Content Transforms Using XSLT, C++ and Java, a group hosted by Thomas Aldous, aims “to help members demystify the possible approaches to transforming content from unstructured or structured formats to any required XML structure.” Check out the group to gain access to sample projects that include examples of two methods of converting a generic structured FrameMaker documents to DITA. If all this technospeak has you worried, Thomas says “don’t fret.” Transforming content “is easier then you have been lead to believe and I would like to show you the way”. Read the full article…

Adobe Releases FrameMaker 8.0 and Captivate 3 Today

July 22, 2007 Blog No Comments

Many technical communication and engineering professionals have been anxiously awaiting the release of the latest version of Adobe FrameMaker and its software simulation cousin Adobe Captivate. Today, the wait is over. FrameMaker 8.0 The new version is not called FrameMaker.Next as some of our readers incorrectly divined from a recent posting on this blog. Instead, it’s called FrameMaker 8.0 and Adobe’s PR machine is making big noise about it. Some folks will find the new release an exciting one—others will not. In our view, FrameMaker 8.0 appears a solid release Read the full article…

Training Program Accelerates Content Creation for Homeland Security Classes Using FrameMaker, DITA

July 9, 2007 Blog No Comments

Proper training is crucial when responding to emergency situations. For firefighters, police officers, homeland security agents, and others protecting the public, the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) offers renowned training and education programs via its Texas headquarters to locations worldwide. Every year, more than 175,000 people participate in TEEX programs, gaining the skills to respond safely and successfully. With more than 550 programs in areas ranging from homeland security to health and safety, TEEX serves a range of clients in the public and private sectors. At the core of TEEX Read the full article…

Readability Tools 1.0 for FrameMaker Helps Writers Communicate Clearly

June 4, 2007 Blog No Comments

Readability Tools 1.0 is a shareware plug-in for Adobe FrameMaker that provides tools that help you analyze and improve the readability of FrameMaker documents and books. The plug-in provides information about the readability of the content you create. It can do things like calculate standard readability formulas, generate readability reports, and produce lists and counts of all words used in a document or book. Readability Tools includes the following tests: Flesch Reading Ease (designed to determine how difficult a reading passage is to understand) Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (provides grade level-based Read the full article…

Unusual Uses For Software: Solving Sudoku Puzzles With Adobe FrameMaker

May 18, 2007 Blog No Comments

From the “these guys have way too much time on their hands” file comes this interesting use of Adobe FrameMaker. The challenge? To solve Sudoku puzzles. We’re not sure if the solution works, but when we find some free time (yeah, right!) we’ll test it out. Until then, why not give it a try.

FrameMaker.Next: Let The Beta Testing Begin!

May 4, 2007 Blog No Comments

The next version of Adobe FrameMaker is almost ready for prime time. All that’s needed is a little testing by experienced users willing to kick the tires and take the new version for a test drive. If you’re interested in beta testing the new release, let the folks at Adobe know. Tell them TheContentWrangler sent you.

Skype Gurus Proclaim Their Love For Adobe FrameMaker

April 27, 2007 Blog No Comments

While reading Skype: The Definitive Guide, we discovered an interesting—albeit strangely placed—proclamation of love for a popular technical writer’s tool: Adobe FrameMaker. In the the book’s preface, the authors, Harry Max and Taylor Ray, thank all the usual people—staff, friends, family. Then, they write: “Last, we want to recognize Adobe Systems for supporting Adobe FrameMaker, the best professional word-processing software available, period.” No details are provided by the authors about the proclamation. Our guess: They used FrameMaker to write the book.

XML Authoring and DITA: An Interesting Analogy

March 10, 2007 Blog No Comments

From the Adobe Technical Communication blog comes this interesting and thought-provoking article, XML Authoring and DITA: An Interesting Analogy. The analogy, provided by Aseem Dokania, Product Manager, Adobe FrameMaker: “Imagine if all countries followed the same driving rules. All cars can be driven in any country, and the road networks could be designed, as per the driving rules, without any knowledge of the actual cars that would drive on it. DITA is similar to these universal driving rules. If everyone follows the DITA specifications, it would be easy to share Read the full article…

Presentations, Proclamations, & Predictions: FrameMaker 8, RoboHelp & Technical Communication Tools

February 21, 2007 Blog 5 Comments

Friday, February 9, 2007, we hosted a double-header Adobe product demonstration for Indianapolis-area help developers and technical publications teams. Our featured presenter was Senior Product Evangelist RJ Jacquez, whose demonstrations covered both Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 and RoboHelp 6. RJ discussed the new features present in both products today and discussed (albeit at a very high level) the much-anticipated FrameMaker 8.0 release, which, according to the grapevine, is expected to be delivered later this year. RJ also focused in on what appears to be Adobe’s acknowledgment of the dramatic changes impacting Read the full article…

Tool Tip: PageLabler Synchronizes Print and PDF Page Numbers

February 11, 2007 Blog 1 Comment

Susan Corcoran of Skaneateles Falls, NY writes in to tell us about one of her favorite tools, PageLabeler, an Adobe Framemaker plug-in from Carmen Publishing. PageLabeler is great, says Corcoran, because it solves a common page numbering problem experienced by technical writers and engineers who create documents in Adobe FrameMaker and output them to PDF. PageLabeler assures the page numbers displayed to user in Acrobat’s toolbar match the original page numbers from the source FrameMaker file, thus eliminating a nasty usability problem.

Tool Tip: RestoreWindows Plug-in for Adobe FrameMaker

January 28, 2007 Blog No Comments

Thanks to Gordon McLean of Graham Technology (Scotland) for turning us on to RestoreWindows ($12 US), a handy plug-in for Adobe FrameMaker that, according to the manufacturer (Leximation), “restores the window location, zoom factor, and view settings of opened documents along with the show/hide state of frequently used tool windows.” Gordon says this is a useful and time-saving tool that is “especially handy for those working with Structured FrameMaker”. No more “open document, open tool 1, open tool 2, open tool 3 everytime you start FrameMaker. Sounds like a time Read the full article…