Now OT, I suppose. RE: Adobe pricing policies (was: FrameMaker 12 released)

[Roger Shuttleworth]

Hello Framers

It has been interesting and entertaining to read the various posts about 
upgrades and pricing. Thanks to Syed for persisting with this. A few 
statements that have been made raised my eyebrows somewhat:

"Three releases of FrameMaker in 18 months" - really? I must have missed 
two of them. FM 11.0.1 and 11.0.2 were "critical" bug fixes, meaning 
that QA had somehow missed testing minor things like publishing a book. 
I'm unaware of a FM 11.1 or 11.2, and so is the Adobe website.

"I just keep smiling when I use the new FM12 UI". This in a supposedly 
unbiased review. Woohoo, coloured icons. Reminds me of a Windex ad. 
Enough said.

But to be serious for a moment: All the complaints about prices, pricing 
models, low-value releases, poor documentation, etc. constitute a very 
cogent argument for structured authoring and XML, with its independence 
of proprietary tools. These are the very evils that the XML community 
have been inveighing against for years now - the old "evil empire" 
comments that used to be made about M$ and other software vendors. It 
seems to me that any Framers who are not yet using structured authoring 
and XML, and/or are not convinced about its benefits, should do some 
serious thinking about where the future lies. Even Adobe has figured 
this out.

Speaking personally, I think the only real argument for continuing to 
use FrameMaker is its so-far peerless PDF generation capability. For 
that you don't need to upgrade at all. And as soon as a cheap or 
open-source alternative appears, that argument becomes irrelavant.

Roger Shuttleworth
(now) Wirral, UK


On 22/01/2014 7:43 PM, Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net) wrote:
>> Also, at $400, I doubt if FrameMaker XML Author is going to be able to compete with other XML editors out there. The idea is fantastic, but the cost needs to be around $100-150 a seat.
>
> A list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_XML_editors. Many licensed and free versions listed there.
>
> I use Altova's XMLSpy Enterprise (for XML and WSDL development work, so it is not inexpensive), but they also have a simpler XML tool available called Authentic: http://www.altova.com/authentic.html.
>
> Authentic is available: (a) free as a Community Edition, with some limitations, and (b) as an Enterprise version with more features for $59 including a support and maintenance package price of $14.75 for 1 year, and $23.60 for 2 years.
>
> I do not know how well Authentic compares to Oxygen or Adobe XML Author, but the price is tough to beat - for either the Community or Enterprise versions! :)
>
> Z
>
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