InDesign as a replacement for Framemaker

[Amnon Yaish]

Graeme,

Are you using any xml / structured functionality on ID ? Does ID have
anything comparable to a FM edd ?

Amnon.



Graeme R Forbes (Graeme.Forbes at Colorado.EDU) said on 12/09/08 at 2:18 :

>Well, I've started to move from FM to ID, so that I do not remain  
>forever stuck with G5 hardware and Tiger. It's with immense  
>reluctance that I reward Adobe with more purchases after they dropped  
>MacFM...no, let's not get started on that.
>
>The ID learning curve is much steeper. I bought FM3 in 1992/3 and  
>immediately started writing a book in it, picking things up as I went  
>along  (need an idea for Xmas presents? -- Modern Logic by Graeme  
>Forbes -- every home should have one). I don't think you could  do  
>that with ID -- hors categorie compared to category 3, Alpe d'Huez vs  
>the foothills of the Jura.
>
>Anyway, I've done a few short docs, and am slowly, with many  
>expletives deleted, getting the hang of it. I don't use the features  
>Dov mentioned -- structure, conditional text, equation editor -- but  
>maybe you can get a lot of FM functionality with 3rd party plug-ins.  
>For me, the lack of xrefs was a deal-breaker until I discovered that  
>DTP Tools, an FM-knowledgeable company, has a plug-in that appears to  
>cover, or even improve on, FM's functionality. It's 99 euros, so  
>assuming they bill you in euros, the dollar price is steadily  
>dropping at the moment.
>
>One thing that bugs me are the ludicrous file sizes. A two-page  
>abstract, entirely text, came in at 1.2MB. An FM equivalent would be  
>around 28K, which was what the pdf I made from the 1.2MB file also  
>came in at. I haven't been able to find anything online about why the  
>files are so big or what, if anything, you can do about it (issues  
>about graphics are irrelevant in my case).
>
>An attractive feature of ID for me is that it's got correctly  
>implemented footnoting.  No more text frames in anchored frames and  
>trial-and-error guessing about how much to cut to get the remainder  
>to jump back to the right page, then having to redo it all when you  
>realize you've made an appalling error on p.2 and fixing it changes  
>all subsequent page breaks.
>
>So: although ID isn't specifically intended for writing technical  
>documents, nothing appears to make it irrational to use it for that.  
>Make a list of what FM features are important/indispensable, and  
>check that ID can do the same. Then go to Configure Plug-ins and  
>disable all the ones that pertain to the production of eye-candy only.
>
>One really maddening issue is "activation". A single-user license  
>only lets you have 2 activations, so if like me you have a home  
>desktop, an office desktop, and a laptop, something has to give. I'm  
>going to try to appeal to Adobe's sense of natural justice to get a  
>third activation for my laptop. Pray for me.
>
>It would be very useful if there were a book, or even if someone just  
>had personal notes they were willing to share, about ID from the FM- 
>user's point of view: the sort of thing that would say, you can do  
>such-and-such in FM easily enough, here's a sequence of steps in ID  
>that will also accomplish it.
>
>Graeme Forbes
>
>
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