[Framers] What do you say when FrameMaker disappoints?

[Alan Houser]

This issue has frustrated me for some time. The FrameMaker app appears 
to be a whack-a-mole of unhandled exceptions. Am I the only one who gets 
an immediate crash on "Help>About FrameMaker" in FrameMaker 2017?

Still, for FrameMaker's "sweet spot" (desktop publishing of large PDFs, 
which many orgs will continue to require into the foreseeable future), I 
don't see many good alternatives.

One recurring issue among my clients ... FrameMaker is rather intolerant 
of network latency. This usually shows up when saving FM files to a 
network drive, but may be an issue when generating PDF. I also see PDF 
failures relating to graphic file corruption. I know you're aware of 
these issues, but thought I would mention them.

-Alan


On 2/10/17 8:54 AM, Rick Quatro wrote:
> Hi Framers,
>
>   
>
> I received this from a client earlier this week:
>
>   
>
> Rick,
>
>   
>
> We've been adding a lot of material to the ... Service Manual and today when
> ... attempted to run a PDF it crashed the same way the ... Service Manual is
> crashing.
>
>   
>
> This is a huge problem for us. Our whole workflow is predicated upon
> FrameMaker working correctly with these large files. Have you had any luck
> finding out why the ... Service Manual is crashing?
>
>   
>
> Regards,
>
> ...
>
>   
>
> As you can image, this is very frustrating for me as a FrameMaker
> consultant, especially since I recommended that they use structured
> FrameMaker for their manuals. It is frustrating for my client because they
> have been asked to quote on another large set of manuals, but now they are
> afraid to move ahead with FrameMaker. I have tried to run the books with
> FrameMaker 2017, but this crashes also. I have reached out to some of my
> contacts at Adobe, but have heard nothing.
>
>   
>
> We need structured FrameMaker because custom HTML5 output is a requirement.
> But to not be able to create PDFs from FrameMaker? This is very
> disappointing.
>
>   
>
> My suggestion for the next version of FrameMaker: go 64-bit and rewrite the
> print engine to make PDF generation faster and stable.
>
>   
>
> In the meantime, I will start looking at alternative solutions.
>
>   
>
> Rick
>
>   
>
> Rick Quatro
>
> Carmen Publishing Inc.
>
> rick at frameexpert.com
>
> 585-366-4017
>
>   

-- 
Alan Houser
Group Wellesley, Inc.
Consultant and Trainer, Technical Publishing
arh on Twitter
412-450-0532