Evaluating FM 7.2 replacement? RE: So how many of us are stuck with Frame 7.2?

[Scott Prentice]

Hi Donna...

The non-Roman character problem should be significantly reduced with 
FM10 .. or InDesign. I've never been able to warm up to working with 
Flare, which feels a lot like RoboHelp .. not that there's anything 
wrong with these products, but if you're used to the solid feel of 
writing in Frame, these other tools feel quite inadequate (to me).

Your easiest path will be to FM10. You'll have some hurdles learning to 
work with the new UI, but that's totally doable. If you have the need to 
generate online output (Help of various kinds), you might consider 
moving to TCS3. The best way to determine if another tool will serve you 
better is to take the time to migrate a representative document or two 
into that tool and see how you like it. Try generating whatever output 
you'll need and try authoring in that tool. If something else does the 
job, go for it. However, don't switch tools just to save a few bucks. 
The money you save on the cheaper tool will likely be lost in a week of 
lost productivity.

Cheers,

...scott


donnaf at uw.edu wrote:
> Hi, Scott and the Framers gang,
> I have found the discussion about staying with or moving on from v7.2 interesting. At my place, we've been putt-putting along happily with FM 7.2 for years. We think we might have a functional/business reason to migrate, maybe to FM v10, or maybe to InDesign or perhaps a MadCap product. We hope we will have the budget for this. 
>
> We understand that v7.2 would no longer work properly with our system environments changing to Windows 7, and the UNIX platform to Linux. (I don't know why this is so.)
>
> We use Frame not for long technical documents, instead pretty much as one would use PageMaker (or maybe InDesign). Our documents are short with graphics that are "read" by an intelligent character recognition database. We collect documents into sets using features like book, conditional text, auto-numbering, user-defined variables, master pages, tables, anchored frames. We mostly output to PDF and postscript. We work with translated text in languages using non-Roman characters, and have a heck of a time getting that into our current Frame documents and make the text "fit" into the areas around the graphic elements. 
>
> I've been tasked to evaluate replacement software. I'm mostly a software user and not a techie, and I've never evaluated a software app for our business processes before. I'm looking for a tool or how-to compare the pros/cons of the different software options. Any recommendations out there?
>
> -Donna 
>
> ________________________________________
> From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] on behalf of Scott Prentice [sp10 at leximation.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 10:00 AM
> To: Carrie Baker; 'Framers'
> Subject: Re: So how many of us are stuck with Frame 7.2?
>
> If there's no business or functional reason to upgrade, why bother? At
> this point you're stuck paying the full price for an upgrade, so if FM7
> provides everything that you need I'd hold out as long as possible. I
> think that there are plenty of people on FM7 and earlier who are
> perfectly happy with the features provided.
>
> Don't tell Adobe I said that though.  :o
>
> There are some useful and cool features in some of the newer versions ..
> but if you're not going to use them, why spend the money?
>
> Cheers,
>
> ...scott
>
>
> Carrie Baker wrote:
>   
>> I am in a small company with not really any justification to move to
>> Frame 8 or 9. Frame7 seems sufficient for what we need, and they do
>> have quite a tight budget.
>> However, now I understand that even if I want to, moving to Frame 10
>> is not an upgrade, but purchase a new license.
>>
>> Are others in the same boat?
>> Is there any point in trying to get an upgrade to version 9, and then
>> at a later point upgrading again?
>>
>> --
>> Carrie Baker
>> carriebak at gmail.com <mailto:carriebak at gmail.com>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>