Framemaker vs. Flare

[Sean Pollock]

   With Adobe having purchased Macromedia some time ago and announcing
   continued support for RoboHelp (see
   [1]http://www.winwriters.com/articles/rh2/index.html), which earlier
   Macromedia had purportedly wanted to drop, it will be interesting to see
   what will come out. My guess is Adobe will revamp FrameMaker to work with
   RoboHelp rather than, or maybe in addition to, Word, something Frame users
   have requested for many years now. Wow, no more MIF imports!! The last few
   versions of RoboHelp have worked (poorly) with WebWorks, and I see Adobe,
   whose animosity toward Microsoft is well known, as wanting to dominate our
   market.

   While Flare, which was created by former Macromedia/Blue Sky RoboHelp people
   when Macromedia was "killing" RoboHelp, seems to be attracting many people
   (see
   [2]http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/0603/techwhirl-0603-00862.html
   ), I'm all for the Adobe products. Admittedly, I don't know much about
   Flare. But imagine an integrated suite of tools intended just for us: Frame,
   RoboHelp, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, others (???)...

   --Sean Pollock, MidNyteOyl
       ______________________________________________________________

     From:  John Posada <jposada01 at yahoo.com>
     To:  AJ Coots <aj.coots at veris.com>, framers at lists.frameusers.com
     Subject:  Re: Framemaker vs. Flare
     Date:  Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:18:41 -0700 (PDT)
     > > Has anyone compared the functionality of Adobe Framemaker 7.2 with
     > > Madcap Software's (formerly Robohelp) Flare?
     > >
     > > I am trying to decide which one to go with for the
     > > documentation for my company. Framemaker seems to be the
     > > industry standard, but is Flare just as good? Any thoughts?
     >
     >Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the FM functionality in the
     >Madcap product is, as of right now, still under very limited alpha
     >testing and has not even gone beta yet.
     >
     >Besides, and again, correct me, but Madcap's FM-wannabe is going to
     >be called Blaze, and I don't know if that's even hit alpha yet.
     >
     >So...if you are looking to implement something in the next couple of
     >quarters and want FM-type binary files, you're choice may be limited.
     >
     >
     >John Posada
     >Senior Technical Writer
     >
     >"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never
     actually known what the question is."
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References

   1. http://www.winwriters.com/articles/rh2/index.html
   2. http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/0603/techwhirl-0603-00862.html