How many FM users are there?

[Maxwell Hoffmann]

Hi Diane,

Thank you for checking with me; your timing could not be better. I am at the STC Annual Convention in Minneapolis, where I've had an opportunity to peak in on several DITA presentations and solicit feedback on FrameMaker's DITA capabilities from a variety of sources.

I won't say that Arbortext is "lying" to you, but they are 100% wrong, and clearly misinformed. The only real difference between Arbortext DITA and FrameMaker that I am aware of is that the current release of FrameMaker (V7.2) requires the user to download the DITA toolkit instead of finding it bundled in the product as it ships.

If you used structured FrameMaker with the DITA app pak, you will be able to produce DITA that is 100% compliant with OASIS standards. As long as your company's division in Japan is producing DITA-compliant output from Arbortext, there is no reason that you cannot have a seamless exchange.

I hope that this ends the argument, but based on past experience of my own  with Arbortext sales people, you can probably expect further claims like this to surface. My feedback comes from a variety of sources, including users who are currently creating DITA from structured FrameMaker 7.2.

Incidentally, I had a "sneak peak" of the next release of FrameMaker at a session today and I got permission from the PM to share this much: DITA will be bundled with the next release and end the 5 minutes or so that it takes to download the DITA toolkit. Feedback from STC attendees who have seen the brief sneak peaks of the "next" FrameMaker has been overwhelmingly positive.

I hope this helps. 


Maxwell Hoffmann
Manager of Consulting & Training Solutions
ENLASO Corporation
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-----Original Message-----
From: Diane Gaskill [mailto:dgcaller at earthlink.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 6:09 PM
To: Diane Gaskill; Maxwell Hoffmann; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: How many FM users are there?

Hi Max,

The PTC rep told me today that FM DITA is proprietary and not compatible with anything else.  Is this true?  She also told me that the PTC version of DITA is "standard" (whatever that means).

One of our divisions in Japan has decided to go with AT.  We are leaning toward structured FM.  I was hoping to be able to exchange XMS files between SFM and AT.  Some of the comments (which you probably read) on the framers list seemed to say that I could, but now I am not sure.  Can you shed any light on this?

Thanks a bunch.

Diane