FM 8 no longer generating PDFs with bookmarks for the AcrobatBookmarks pane

[Syed.Hosain at aeris.net]

Hi, Dov.

Please pardon my rant below ... not your personal fault at all! But,
Adobe does seriously need to fix PDF generation from FrameMaker, IMHO.

Dov wrote:
> FrameMaker (exceptionally unfortunately) unlike InDesign, Illustrator,
and Photoshop does NOT have the ability to directly export PDF using the
Adobe PDF Library.

[rant]
Is this still true for FrameMaker 9? (I have not checked this yet for
the trial version that I install a few days onto a Windows 7 system
here).

If still true, *when* should we expect it to happen? Frankly, the
inability to easily and reliably generate PDF from FrameMaker is
something that has been present far too long! And this issue needed to
be addressed *way* sooner than the fancy front-end that has been
released in FrameMaker 9. It is one of my pet peeves with FrameMaker
although I love the *program* otherwise (been using it - off and on -
since 1988 on a Sun 3/50)!

When I went back to using FrameMaker some years back, *every* time I
have done a FrameMaker version upgrade (from 6.0 to my current 8.0 -
every version!), I have had to reset the parameters and options I use
for the PDF generation process with Acrobat (also have all recent
versions). For the *same* set of books - and the settings are different
for each book! This last time, I had to turn Paragraph Tags on for one
large document for the process to work with FrameMaker 8 - the last
time, I had to turn it off for FM 7.2 for the very same document. To
avoid FrameMaker crashes or correctly generate the PDF output (without
missing tables or duplicated pages containing long tables)! I suspect
that I will have to do it again with FrameMaker 9 when I get there. :(

And, even now, with FrameMaker 8 and Acrobat 9, when I generate a PDF
from one of my documents, it still annoys me that I have to open the PDF
output in Acrobat and set properties that I *should* be able to feed
into it from FrameMaker. Better integration of FrameMaker and Acrobat
and/or far more control of the PDF generation from FrameMaker would be a
real blessing! Since I do relatively frequent PDF generation (it is for
specifications that tend to change relatively often, and I send out
review copies in PDF format), this just adds delays and occasional
"oops, forgot to set the property" moments!
[/rant]


So ... the real QUESTION: when do you/Adobe expect the Adobe FrameMaker
software developers to learn how to use the Acrobat SDK, libraries,
etc., and "do it right"? Please feel free to pass the question on to
whoever is in charge of FrameMaker development!

Z