Frame Light, what's the potential market?

[Alan T Litchfield]

On 23/02/2011, at 11:20 AM, Brad Anderson wrote:

> I, too, have wished for the capability for more than 10 years and  
> have requested it numerous times from Adobe.   This would be one way  
> to bring back the Mac version--add FrameMaker lite to the App  
> store.  I think a price point of $99 or less would be great.

If there were to be an argument for the release of a Mac version, I  
would push for a full version and not something stripped down. The  
only reason I operate Windows is so I can have FrameMaker, indeed I  
recently obtained an old eMac so I could install FM 7 for the Mac on  
it and run that under Classic.

Having a Lite version for the Mac is a step towards there never being  
another full version on that platform.

> There are too many of our clients that end up porting their  
> documents back and forth from Word to FrameMaker.   This is due to  
> licensing costs, training, and Word just has better (and more easily  
> used) functions for tracking and editing changes.

So why fight it? Why not instead improve the workflow and facilitate  
what it is that people are doing now? Have a robust Word export and  
import function that actually works. One in which Word garbage can  
actually be filtered out and that can be used to create Word documents  
that already have locked down styles, or can be used to create Word  
templates that restrict user options.


>
> I think it was a mistake for FrameMaker 10 not to include ePub  
> output directly from FrameMaker.  I can output an ePub straight from  
> InDesign or straight from Apple Pages, but I need the full TCS3 to  
> output ePub through RoboHelp.

Indeed, and with 9. However it begs the question, why not an export  
filter? That has little to do with a Lite version which, to be Lite,  
would surely lack export options and only allow saving in the same  
format as that which the file arrived in?

Alan

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