FrameMaker vs InDesign

[Graeme R Forbes]

Rob: I switched to ID when Apple dropped Classic and Adobe reneged on its promise to make all its "major" applications PPC/OSX native. The grass on the other side is somewhat greener, especially if you're having stability issues with FM and resent having to break footnotes across pages manually. I run ID (CS4) under Snow Leopard now and previously under Tiger. In the last year the only crashes I've had related to third-party plug-ins. You can use ID in FM-style, where each doc is a bunch of body pages tied to particular master pages of your own design. Footnotes behave correctly. But if you rely heavily, as I did, on FM's x-ref abilities, you'll probably find ID's built-in ones inadequate (among other limitations, it can't x-ref footnote numbers!). The best solution to this problem is to buy DTP Tools' X-ref Pro, which equals or exceeds what FM can do. On the minus side, it's 99e on top of what you pay for ID; on the plus side, it's really good and DTP Tools has excellent customer support.

Graeme Forbes

Sent from my iPad