Is FrameMaker 11 going down or is it a keeper?

Tue Dec 18 16:32:42 PST 2012

I can provide a tiny bit of data, for what it's worth.

Each year, the NZ tech comms society (TCANZ) does a salary survey, and asks about tool usage while they're at it. 

In 2011, the tools part of the survey had 110 respondents from 85 different companies. 
Of those, there were 15 FM users from 6 different companies.

So that suggests very roughly 14% of tech writers in New Zealand use FM, in 7% of companies. I'm guessing FM use is biased towards bigger companies. The survey was self-selecting, so it's biased towards those who take their tech writing career seriously enough to belong to TCANZ (~90% of respondents) and to fill out the survey. 

Flare had 10 users and Author-IT had 30. Author-IT does well in NZ because it's a local product.

Cheers
Rebecca

>>> "Rob Shell" <rshell at iafrica.com> 19/12/12 12:22 >>>
Dear Framers:
When passing judgment, Framers should also declare whether they are working
in structured or unstructured. I am working with unstructured print and pdf.
Perhaps my remarks only apply to those modes. 
This list is the sole reason I continue with FM.

I think we need some scientific data on how many FM seats there are
globally, how many there were in 2005, 2006,2007,2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 &C.
Could Adobe, or someone oblige?
I am sure these stats are hard to come by. One has to make do with what one
has.
In that light, it is worth noting that Norton Insight, which has good
quantitative data on all global software, has changed its damning one line
"few users, slightly unstable" to the much worse "Stability unknown" for
FM11.
When FrameMaker dropped the Mac, I fully expected the program to fold. All
those loyal users down the toilet.
In none of FrameMaker promos is the number of users EVER mentioned. "Fastest
growing software" it ain't.
My guestimate is that the user base has shrunk to below a thousand.

Indesign can now do multiple indexes and I foresee that I will not be
upgrading my hugely disappointing TCS4. 
At least the Indy menu system is logical and includes endnotes and split
footnotes. 
My feeling after using the same set of big files since FM 6 is that the
FrameMaker is in bad shape and going down. 
FM9 was such a disaster that little attempt has been made to fix it. You
only have to look at it and it falls over. 
FM 10 was released too soon and so too was FM11 without the sound testing of
all components. Poor documentation, or zero documentation on its scripting
and even poor packaging.
FM 11 is not faster for the work I do.  Only print to pdf is fast, but then
there are no comparisons as it NEVER worked before.
Hope sprung up when we users were asked for improvements. None came my way.
I was not informed by Adobe of new updates, nor that purchasers of the
classic "cant-print-to-ps" FM11 were entitled to Acrobat 11.
The biggest weakness for me is that FrameMaker has no options to specify
extra memory limits, no place to specify scratch disks, which Photoshop,
Illustrator and all other first class software all have. Looking at older
versions of Frame I was surprised that the Unix version could adjust FM
memory. Why is memory usage for Framers such a secret? How comes Frame dumps
4,000 scratch files every time it crashes. Are there enough handles? The
"Cannot display imported graphics" message are becoming more frequent as my
tiny jpg files get smaller and smaller. Despite specially purchased graphic
memory it's the GUI that falters and then Frame fails 5 minutes later.

Please let us not get sentimental about FrameMaker. I fervently hope a
better mousetrap will soon be here. I will be very glad to be rid of 2012,
ruined for me by TCS4 FrameMaker and its "scammy" advertorials.

Rob Shell
Windows Seven
FrameMaker 11 patched
4 GB RAM
3 TB hd

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