Frame Light, what's the potential market?

[Alan T Litchfield]

Hi Ant,

Probably not what you want to hear but...

Frankly, why bother. It is reinventing the wheel that Adobe decided to  
let fall some years go with Frame View, et al. InDesign already has a  
client application for copy editing, I see no particular reason for  
Frame to have another application added to the mix when Adobe have  
just spent the last several years consolidating the range of Frame  
products into one.

People do their own thing now. Why would they want to change that and  
give up their creative freedoms? From their standpoint you might  
consider this as a corporate imposition on what it is they want to  
achieve and not as a means to streamline and improve their work.

When I have wanted a client to edit and update content I have used  
mif2go and exported the relevant chapter(s) as rtf. This provides the  
benefit of ensuring only named styles are exported into the file,  
along with named fonts, etc. Alternatively I have made a Word template  
which has limited access to unwanted styles. Do you really want people  
to go editing the content of your documents? Have they been trained,  
and what of your own job security?

 From the SME standpoint:
1, I would not want to have go out buy another word processor when I  
already have one.
2, I am a business person, I know what I want and don't need to be  
told. Word does what I want.
3, I have a business to run, I do not want to be bothered with having  
to learn a new program to do the things I can already do with what I  
already have.
4, What am I paying those guys for? Now they want me to do their work  
and pay their license fees too?

I do not see that having a Frame Light version adds any particular  
value to FrameMaker or to a workflow without the addition of  
significant other supporting infrastructure such as versioning, which  
on its own entails a server and network, and security, and hardware,  
and software...

All these can be achieved with Acrobat's editing and annotation  
functions. From my experience these already provide significant value,  
and when added to the rtf export with mif2go, there is not a lot left  
for a Frame Lite version to do.

Good luck though.

Cheers
Alan

On 22/02/2011, at 11:56 PM, Anthony Davey wrote:

> Cross posted to dita-frameusers, so ignore as needed ...
>
> I had an interesting discussion with the Frame Product Manager a few  
> days ago at
> the London launch event for TCS3.  It seems there is the motivation  
> to develop a
> business case for 'Frame Light' which could be used by SMEs to  
> create and review
> content, but little else.
>
> I work in an environment where I am the only Frame user  
> (experimenting with 10
> at the moment) in an organisation with over 100 SMEs producing  
> content in Word.
> Most do their own thing, or come to me to 'fix' or standardise stuff  
> once it is
> collected together.
>
> So, I would want 'Frame Light' to allow content creation in  
> structured or
> unstructured format (including DITA one day), but that requires the  
> content
> provider to use only the pre-determined paragraph formats and a few  
> text styles
> (emphasis, bold, sub- and superscript); and insert images by  
> reference.  I can
> get around a need to define conditional text by using different  
> paragraph format
> names.  All this in templates that can only be developed or altered  
> by full
> license holders.
>
> To support the development of a business case can you post what  
> (other)
> functionality you would want Frame Light to have, how many licenses  
> you would
> (ideally) want in your organisation, how many full Frame licenses  
> you currently
> have (for comparison purposes), how you would want FL delivered  
> (local install,
> web-based, floating licenses), and what you would want/need to pay  
> for it to get
> it accepted as an alternative to Whatever word processing your SMEs  
> currently
> use?
>
> Creating more disciplined (structured), reusable, content which can  
> be output
> with a similar look and feel, and doesn't reinvent a wheel each time  
> an SME puts
> fingers to keyboard, is a concept which has almost reached its time  
> in my
> organisation. Others may be close, or even ahead, so there must be  
> demand for
> this.  Please let me know.
>
> Best regards,
> Ant
>

--
Alan T Litchfield
AlphaByte
PO Box 1941, Auckland, 1140
New Zealand
http://www.alphabyte.co.nz
http://www.alphabyte.co.nz/beatrice