Third-party or "out of the box" plugins [was "re: Frame's future"]

[hedley.finger at myob.com]

Since my post about plugins diverted this thread from its original topic 
onto a discussion of the merits of plugins, may I amplify my remarks?

The original discussion was, generally, about what Adobe needed to do to 
find out what functionality their customers would need in the future.

I attempted to make the point that a study of the third-party plugins 
would indicate to Adobe the gaps in FrameMaker's functionality that they 
need to address, and chose indexing plugins as an example where there are 
many independent plugins to improve this functionality.  Indexing is 
surely a fundamental function of a publishing application, not bloatware 
as one correspondent implied.  I am not a professional indexer, but any 
user of Sky Index, Cindex, Authex, or Macrex will tell you how *fast* 
these tools are -- progressive matching against previous entries to speed 
up entry, real-time display of the compiled index, editing entries in the 
real-time display (e.g. "dogs/feeding", "dogs/breeds", "dogs/shows" can be 
quickly changed to "canines/feeding", "canines/breeds", "canines/shows" by 
changing the main entry "dogs" in one place), fast construction of sort 
order, application of char formats, view of entries in page order showing 
what entries are on what page, etc.**

These many plugins are surely a pointer to a need to improve the indexing 
functionality "out of the box", either by Adobe developing this 
functionality to a level comparable to the standalone tools or by 
licensing in suitable third-party plugins.

While there are many ingenious plugins available that various people have 
developed to scratch an itch shared by only a few, FrameMaker customers 
should not have to hunt for third-party tools that address *fundamental* 
functionality.  I am sure that Frank Elmore would be happy to license 
FrameScript/ElmScript if Adobe were willing to pay an appropriate fee, for 
instance.

Regards,
Hedley


** Amazingly, none of these "smart" tools embed the entries in the source 
file as Word and FrameMaker do.  If the pagination changes there are some 
crude methods of reassigning page numbers but if, say, the pagination is 
radically different in a new edition (think of the various paperback, 
hardcover and coffee-table edition of Dava Sobel's "Longitude") the index 
has to be manually recompiled! Truly!

--
Hedley Finger
Training Content Developer and Tools Specialist
MYOB Australia Pty Ltd <http://myob.com/au>
P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood VIC 3151 Australia
<mailto:hedleyDOTfingerATmyobDOTcom>
Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421,   Mob. (cell) +61 412 461 558

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