Re: InDesign as a FrameMaker substitute?

[David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Art,

InDesign was originally launched to be a competitor for Quark Express
in the high-end publishing market, not so much as a replacement for
PageMaker--although it has become that as well. The original versions,
1.0 and 1.5, were pretty lame. Beginning with version 2.0, InDesign
became capable enough and well enough integrated into the production
chain (mostly through direct use of native Photoshop and Illustrator
files) that this goal was reached. Today, InDesign continues to
replace Quark throughout the graphic design and layout industry.

Just before Frame 7 was launched, the Adobe CEO, Bruce Chizen was
featured in an interview published (briefly) to the Web in streaming
video. In that interview, he stated flatly that their plan was to
begin to incorporate long-document functionality into InDesign so that
it might replace Frame entirely at some point. He pointed out that the
InDesign architecture is much more modern, more modular, and easier to
upgrade as necessary.

His marketing people had immediate apoplexy, given the impending lauch
of Frame 7, and quickly disavowed the Chizen interview so their Frame
7 launch wouldn't be stunted.

Incidentally, a very interesting take on Chizen, Adobe, and the
Macromedia purchase is at http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/fish_head
, in an essay entitled "A Fish Rots from the Head."

I absolutely love InDesign for the purpose it was intended--to be a
Quark killer. For high-styled printed docs such as magazines,
brochures, posters, letterheads, ads--there is nothing better.

For technical documents, I'd much rather use OpenOffice.org if I
couldn't use Frame.

That doesn't mean they won't eventually get there--although I suspect
their road to the goal will be largely through increasing XML
integration.

Meanwhile, many of the Frame developers have been cashiered and
development was offshored some time ago to India, as I understand it.
I would be absolutely shocked if we ever see a Frame 8.0, unless as a
poorly numbered incremental upgrade or as a re-engineered application
that consists of a grafting of long document features onto the
InDesign base.

David

On 8/16/05, Art Campbell <art -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> 
> I think you're misremembering. InDesign was always promoted as a PageMaker
> replacement, but I don't think anyone at Adobe has pushed it as a
> Frame replacement
> yet.

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