making stuff unconditional in FM12

[Rick Quatro]

I share a lot of Gary's frustrations, although I haven't expressed it as
eloquently :-). I also appreciate Alexandra's and Scott's opinions. I am not
opposed to the OWL interface, per se, having used it in InDesign, etc. It is
the general lack of quality control and consistency that has been
disappointing for me. FM 9 was really a dog as far as performance and
stability and the interface changed the way important short cuts worked in
previous versions. FrameMaker 11 had an undocumented FDK change that caused
problems with document display updates in plugins and scripts. Documentation
updates have lagged behind in each release. The ExtendScript documentation
is sparse and contains inaccurate information. At the same time, users have
had to pay premium dollars for each release while Adobe struggles to "get it
right".

For me, FrameMaker 8 was a solid version. It had unicode support and the
"old", simple interface made things fast and efficient for automation.
Scripts typically run slower in the newer versions and you have to ignore
long periods of a white, "Not Responding" screen.

InDesign is not perfect for long documents, but the quality and "fit and
finish" of the entire InDesign universe is a stark contrast to the
FrameMaker world.

Rick Quatro

Carmen Publishing Inc.

585-366-4017

rick at frameexpert.com

 

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Zimmerman, Gary
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2014 7:08 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: making stuff unconditional in FM12

 

I swear it's like the Adobe FrameMaker developers do absolutely NO usability
testing, get absolutely NO feedback from existing customers, focus groups,
or anything else before they foist on us a crappy, untested GUI that their
offshore developers implemented in some kind of cultural vacuum.  (Not
offshore culture so much as programmer culture - before any programmers get
offended, there are plenty of exceptional programmers who have a GREAT sense
of usability and customer needs - apparently Adobe hasn't hired any for the
FM team, nor any usability/human factors consultants.)

 

The programming underneath may be great (I doubt it, with the general
fragility of the thing for many releases now), but the usability if
off-the-charts bad.  Like something designed by a bunch of college
programmers who have no concept of building a usable product, but instead
think "more is better" so they toss in everything figuring that they'll have
something for everyone, and end up with such a hash salad that you spend
more time jumping through GUI hoops than you do productive writing.
(Remember what college kids did when word processors introduce lots of fun
fonts to play with - the FM 9 and 10 GUI is pretty much the GUI equivalent
of "ransom letter" tech writing.)

 

I can remember when FM was unquestionably a better choice than Word for any
serious documentation work.  Now they're approaching parity.  I don't know
about FM8, but when we jumped from 7 to 9, it was all downhill after that.
We're on 10 now, debating upgrading.  We're also moving to a DITA CMS and
Xmetal editor - much less powerful, but it does what it needs to do without
being an obstacle to the writers.  We didn't even consider using FM as our
XML editor, though the transition might have been less of an issue for our
writers who are used to FM.

 

Sorry to rant.  I LIKE FM.  I'm just so sorry they messed with the GUI and
messed up so badly with 9 and onwards.  They may fix it to be decent again
incrementally, but like Windows 8, they should have scrapped the whole thing
when they realized what a horrible blunder they made instead of turning a
deaf ear and insisting everything was great for so long, when real users
knew it wasn't so.  Credibility gone.  Maybe 11 is better, maybe 12 even
better.  Don't know if I'll ever get to try them.

 

-- garyZ

 

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