FrameMaker 9

[Mike Wickham]

I work with unstructured documents, graphically rich, with limited 
cross-referencing, and very limited amounts of conditional text. So I can't 
comment on any of the sophisticated features, such as structure, DITA, XML, 
and so forth.

FrameMaker 9's new interface is a major change. It is very Creative 
Suite-like and lets you set separate workspaces for separate tasks. It comes 
with several default workspaces, such as "Authoring" and "Manage Graphics," 
that open appropriate panels and "pods" onscreen. These items stay open 
until you close them intentionally, or change to a different workspace that 
does not use them. There's no more repetitively opening and closing dialog 
boxes to complete certain tasks. I like that I can set the anchored frame, 
object properties, and runaround properties panels to be open on screen. 
Before, if I wanted to see the filename of a graphic I had imported by 
reference, I had to right click on the graphic, choose the anchored frame 
context menu item, and manually close the dialog box afterward. Now I just 
click on a graphic, and all the panels populate with the appropriate 
information at a glance-- and there's no need to close any of them to 
proceed with my work.

The only downside to the new interface is that it's easy to get too many 
panels or pods open at once-- which can take up a lot of screen real estate. 
But that's where setting up workspaces for different tasks comes in. Or, 
like me, use a 3-monitor setup where it's not an issue. : ) The panels can 
also be set to collapse to tabs. There's a good video online at the Adobe 
site about the new workspace in FM9. I found the new interface confusing, at 
first, but watching this video cleared it all up.

The pods are really cool. They are like panels, but contain lists. Open the 
pod for cross-references, and you can see every one in the file. Clicking on 
its instance in the pod takes you to the location in the file. You can set 
the Insets pod to list all graphics in the file, all text insets, or both. 
Again, clicking in the list takes you to the location in the file.

Book files now have nesting capabilities and you can set some to 
non-printing. For example, I keep some files in my books that list fonts 
used, graphics referenced, and graphics still needed. I don't want these 
files in the final PDF. Now I can set them so that they never are, and I 
don't have to remember to specify it each time I create a PDF.

Adobe has made available a free plugin download, SDLAuthorAssistant, which 
is a grammar checker among other things. It's not as good as Word's live 
grammar checking, but it's a big step in the right direction.

There are still some bugs, which have been discussed on the forum. So far, 
I've encountered none that are killer, and Adobe staff have been actively 
jumping in to try to swat them. The worst I've encountered is that scrolling 
with the arrow keys slows if the Paragraph Designer is open. I try to have 
patience because the upgrade to FM 9 was not a small change, and I see Adobe 
actively working to fix problems that slipped through.

So, overall, my opinion is that FM9 is very worthwhile, though there are 
still a few minor bugs (as every upgrade has had). I've been working with FM 
since version 6, and I think it's the best upgrade yet.

Mike Wickham

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pat Christenson" <pxenson at comcast.net>
To: "FrameUsers List" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 2:31 PM
Subject: FrameMaker 9


> Any opinions? Thanks.
>
> Pat Christenson