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Subject:Re: Rumour about Framemaker - is it true??? From:T K <tvk_tw -at- yahoo -dot- ie> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 12 Jan 2005 12:26:48 +0000 (GMT)
Larry Kollar wrote:
>As others have mentioned, Adobe has already dropped
>MacOS support for Frame. My personal opinion is that
>the Windows and Solaris versions are bound for
>Software Limbo sooner than later, although I have no
>hard evidence to back up that statement. But
>Frame, being an application more or less associated
>with professional technical writers, has followed the
>general decline of technical writing as a profession
>over the last decade.
>Well, in a future distant enough (and certainly not
>soon enough for me), Word and Microsoft itself will
>cease to exist. :-) It's more important to have an
>exit strategy for your current documentation -- in
>other words, how will you import files from Tool A
>into Tool B? Some approaches are more reliable than
>others -- the most reliable being a text-based
>interchange format that preserves the structure (not
>necessarily the formatting) of your document.
>Nowadays, XML is the first thing that comes to mind
>for most, but there are other ways.
Thanks to everyone who commented on my question
regarding Framemaker. I have followed the discussions
with interest over the past few days. I think Larry
has hit the nail on the head -- it is very important
to have an exit strategy for your current
documentation. If we do make the change to Framemaker
(from Word, I might add) and Framemaker goes away in a
couple of years time, the exit strategy can be adopted
once again to ease the transition to whatever is next
- possibly InDesign going by what many of you have
written.
Anyway, your comments will provide some food for
thought for my superiors. The decision does not rest
with me -- I was just curious to find out what was
going on and to get some informed input from the
wealth of knowledge that is this forum.
Tom.
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