[Framers] FrameMaker vs Flare

[Shmuel Wolfson]

It seems that the benefits of Flare over Frame are:
- More customizable/better HTML output
- Better support
- Better single sourcing than unstructured Frame
- They don't charge an arm and a leg to pay for upgrades

The benefits of Frame over Flare are:
- Better PDFs
- Less of learning curve for unstructured Frame, and possibly for 
structured Frame

I don't believe that Adobe has abandoned Frame, but they do charge an 
insane amount for upgrades and the support is not so great, which is 
similar to abandoning their users. Having said that, since I mainly 
produce PDFs, I have no plans on switching to Flare any time soon.

--
Shmuel Wolfson
Technical Writer
058-763-7133


On 27-Jun-18 7:59 AM, Alan Litchfield wrote:
> I don't think the issue in this conversation is about Adobe abandoning 
> FM, but that the corporate model Adobe chooses to use has effectively 
> driven a lot of us old timers out the door, into the arms of its 
> competitors. Yes, there have been a bunch of new features and added 
> support for functions that required external plug-in support 
> previously, but the interface is actually quite hard for me to 
> navigate now, especially now that so many keyboard commands have 
> disappeared or changed.
>
> For me, my last favourite version was 7.2 on the Mac (which I still 
> have running by the way, on a G5 tower). Sure it lacked all the fancy 
> mod-cons of later versions but I could run that application for months 
> at a time (without shutting down the computer or program) without 
> issue. Can't say the same for the current version, I'm afraid. And as 
> I said earlier, part of the reason was being locked out of the 
> application due to licensing problems.
>
> Version 5.5.2 on Linux was fun while it lasted. Of course, one does 
> miss the hominess of Frame Corp, but that was a long time ago now.
>
> Alan
>
> -- 
> Dr Alan Litchfield
> AlphaByte
> PO Box 1941
> Auckland, New Zealand 1140
>
> On 27/06/18 13:42, ideaslists at ideastraining.com wrote:
>> I've been hearing rumors of Adobe's abandonment of Frame for years, 
>> if not
>> decades. The timing of these rumors is almost as regular as an atomic
>> clock...
>>
>> Abandonment hasn't happened yet. Oddly, I find the rumors tend to peak
>> before Adobe announces a new version. This list, or any public list, 
>> is not
>> a good way to make a decision about FrameMaker. Those that know can't 
>> say;
>> those that say usually don't know.
>>
>> David Creamer
>> IDEAS Training
>> ______________________
>> All of these posts regarding Adobe's poor support/abandonment of FM 
>> are one
>> of the reasons why my company decided to focus on another tool and 
>> migrate
>> away from FM.  All of the technical publications staff (including me) 
>> are
>> now using Madcap Flare and we have just completed a 2 year migration 
>> of all
>> FM documents into Flare.   It was a bit sad to say goodbye to FM, but 
>> the
>> handwriting was on the wall.
>>
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