Frame Maker 9 and some questions about its indexing and page limits

[Gary Schnabl]

Shell, Robert wrote:
> Dear Framers:
> I have been enjoying unparalleled stability with my FM 8.p20? running on 
> Vista Business edition (with all updates). I have now graduated to the 
> Professional Communications Suite 2 and also bought FrameScript. I am a very 
> happy camper, although surveying many learning curves.
>
> Nevertheless, the stability of FM9 has encouraged me in my humble 
> unstructured authoring style to take on a really ambitious project. 
> Historians like me use primary documents, i.e.  eyewitness accounts as their 
> building blocks in all their interpretations which are called secondary 
> sources. This entails that few people can ever become historians because 
> trips to archives are so expensive and intimidating that few venture back 
> after their first visit.
>
> I think I can fix that. I figured that primary documents can easily be fed 
> into FM and then edited with footnotes and indexed with multiple indexes. 
> Thus even I am providing only a glorified finding aid, I am still providing 
> a huge, new and fast service to all would be-historians. All in pdf.
>
> My first attempt is now in its second edition and is 7,000 pages long of 
> which 1,000 pages were 7 indexes, viz. authors, persons, places, subjects, 
> ships, titles and a timeline. The first edition was authored using PageMaker 
> with a single index. With the second edition, using FM 8, I experienced 
> problems (hangings or crashes) with the generation of all these heavily 
> formatted indexes, some three levels deep. But I persevered and the CD is 
> now on sale with clickable indexes and embedded Flash movies, etc.
>
> Now with FM9 I have created a full suite of new documents of 42,000 pages, 
> and when I say pages I mean real pages as in a 19th century book (300 words 
> a page).
>
> So my first question is. Does anyone know what the upper limits of FM9 are 
> with regard to
>                      a) number of subdocuments and
>                      b) number and complexity of indexes.
>                      c) total number of pages
> Will Acrobat reader manage with all this?
>
> Finally, does anyone with FM use two screens? I am unhappy with all these 
> boxes and pods in FM9 and would like them all on a second screen (which I 
> would have to buy). I have not learnt how to dock them yet. Any hints 
> gratefully received.
>
> Thanks to the organizers of this wonderful listserv.
>
> Rob Shell
>   

Maybe you could ask Bill Gates about using two displays.Some computer 
show over the weekend mentioned that Bill was a three-monitor guy.

Gary