[Framers] FrameMaker vs InDesign

[Tori Muir]

Regrettably, that isn't necessarily true. A lot of the folks who use InD are first and foremost *designers*, and have no qualms about hand-formatting everything on the page to produce a lovely composition. It can be very difficult to get users with that mindset to switch to a structure-based/formats-driven viewpoint. Additionally, a huge number of the InD users I've worked with/trained in long document work can't even set up an auto-bulleted paragraph, let alone autonumbering, and I shudder to think what would happen if they tried indexing. 

I would qualify the below statement by saying that if they are already using InD the way one needs to use Frame, you'll have no problem training them. If, on the other hand, their preferred approach is to use InD the way one might use Illustrator, you're in for a rough ride. I'll never forget the time a client had me update the InD files for their product catalog: 235 pages containing ~800 products, a TOC and an  index, without a single paragraph/character format defined, no generated TOC or index, no book files, not even auto-connected text flows from page to page. The most advanced thing they'd done was add a page number to the master page.  But the catalog *looked* lovely!

Tori Muir
 

On 6/23/17, 11:03 AM, "Framers on behalf of Robert Lauriston" <framers-bounces+tmuir=spot-on-creative.com at lists.frameusers.com on behalf of robert at lauriston.com> wrote:

    Or train someone else to use FrameMaker. Someone who knows InDesign
    shouldn't have much trouble learning it.
    
    Wha'ts delivered to the customer? FM files or PDF or ?
    
    On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 6:39 PM, Mikey Shine <mikeyshine at gmail.com> wrote:
    
    > Why?
    >
    > Well I think the easy answer is that I hear most often from my employer is
    > that I am the ONLY one who can work on this publication and this one
    > publication is a huge part of the contract. Should something either happen
    > to me or my employment with the company, they feel they'd find themselves
    > between the proverbial rock and a hard place fast. The obvious question is
    > why not hire someone else with the necessary experience in Frame to back me
    > upright? I have no idea what their answer would be to that question.
    >
    > I guess if I'm being totally honest here, what I'm actually looking for is
    > for more pros than cons as to why this document should remain in Frame. In
    > today's workplace, I've found there's nothing quite like the job security
    > of this publication being a native FrameMaker file and I'd really rather
    > not give that up if I don't have to ;-)
    >
    > > On Jun 22, 2017, at 11:59 AM, Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com>
    > wrote:
    > >
    > > What do they hope to accomplish by doing that?
    > >
    > > The only sane reason I know would be that you deliver only as PDF
    > > and/or print and want to be able to tweak it to get more visually
    > > distinctive results than you get with FrameMaker.
    > >
    > > There's a service that will do the conversion:
    > > http://www.dtptools.com/product.asp?id=mfid
    > >
    > >> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Mikey Shine <mikeyshine at gmail.com>
    > wrote:
    > >> My company has informed me that they’d like to switch one of our major
    > publications over from FrameMaker to InDesign. If conversion is not an
    > option, they wouldn’t be opposed to rebuilding the entire publication from
    > scratch as an InDesign document.
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