TCS 4 as DITA out-of-the-box solution

[Robert Lauriston]

When I evaluated Oxygen XML, it seemed like a full-featured
single-source help authoring tool much like Madcap Flare, except using
DITA as its source format. Out-of-the-box web help and PDF output
seemed of professional quality to me. I could have been productive
immediately.

TCS 3.5 / FrameMaker 10, on the other hand, I was unable to evaluate
(even though I'm fairly expert in unstructured FrameMaker) due to the
lack of documentation and samples for doing DITA with structured
FrameMaker. I know from reading other people's reports that it can be
used to author DITA and DocBook projects, but figuring out how to do
it would have required some sort of third-party consulting, training,
or add-ons. Maybe TCS 4 / FrameMaker 11 has better samples and
documentation, but I looked for such improvements when it came out and
did not find them.

Another weakness of TCS: all else being equal, I would prefer not to
create any new projects involving RoboHelp. I've found it inflexible
and buggy, and had to use MIF2Go for some output formats RoboHelp
could not generate.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Scott Prentice <sp10 at leximation.com> wrote:
> ... The big thing that sets TCS apart from other DITA authoring tools is that in
> addition to authoring, it provides a more complete publishing solution for
> both PDF and various online formats. ...