Adobe Systems, Inc.
345 Park Ave.
San Jose CA 95110-2704

Web Site
www.adobe.com

When I meet people, they ask me what I do in my real life. I tell them I'm a technical writer for CableData. Inevitably the question comes up about what software I use. When I say I use FrameMaker, I always get one question in response: "What is FrameMaker, anyway?"
      It's a natural question. FrameMaker is known as a professional document creation tool, but Adobe doesn't promote it as much as its other professional tools, so there is some mystery about it. The answer is that FrameMaker is a hybrid--it combines the most powerful tools from word processing and desktop publishing to create a unique and flexible document creation program. FrameMaker also adds some unique features that make it an ideal choice for creating large documents.
      What's more, the newest version of FrameMaker (5.5.6) has enhanced tools for exporting manuals to HTML and XML formats, and comes bundled with Acrobat 3.0 so you can export to PDF format and modify those PDF files. Adobe has positioned FrameMaker as an all-in-one document creation package, and for the most part, it succeeds.

In Our Last Episode
My last review of FrameMaker appeared in the December 1997 issue of Sacra Blue, when I reviewed FrameMaker 5.1.2. Back then Adobe had just purchased Frame Technologies, and it showed since Adobe had just slapped its own cover on Frame's manual and shipped it out in Adobe packaging. Since then, most of what made FrameMaker such a powerful program hasn't changed.
      In this review, I'd like to discuss some of those powerful features and how they compare to Word and PageMaker, the word processing and desktop publishing software I use more often. You'll notice that FrameMaker combines the best of both.

Text processing: Like Word, FrameMaker lets you type in anything you want to as soon as you start the program. You don't have to place text files as you do in PageMaker (though you can easily import text files from other sources in FrameMaker). You can also create text frames on pages to add pull quotes and other text you want independent of your main body of text.

Formatting: FrameMaker has style catalogs for paragraph text (as with Word and PageMaker) and for character text (as with Word). FrameMaker gives you a lot of flexibility in determining what you want your styles to look like, and you can add and delete styles as you see fit. FrameMaker also shows the paragraph and character text catalogs on screen, which is very handy.
      Like PageMaker, FrameMaker uses master pages, which are page templates that you can apply to body pages (the pages you're editing). This is much more flexible than Word's section breaks, which can cause great consternation in no time.

Graphics: FrameMaker has its own graphics tools that let you draw simple graphics on screen. You can also import a variety of graphics into an anchored frame, which stays where you insert it in the text. If the text in the document moves up or down, the anchored right with it.

Strengths...
FrameMaker has several different strengths that set it apart from other documentation tools.

Book building: This is FrameMaker's key strength. FrameMaker's page limit for documents is about 50 pages. FrameMaker gives you the ability to put all these documents into one continuous book file with appropriate page and section numbering and cross-references.

Tables: The ability to create tables is a staple in many documentation tools. FrameMaker goes one better and includes the ability to set table styles that you can create and use for different tables.

Equation editor: FrameMaker has a top-notch equation editor if you're creating documents with all sorts of equations. The equation editor is much more flexible than what I've found in Windows word processors.

Importing and exporting: FrameMaker has good support for importing files from all sorts of documents. What's better, FrameMaker lets you import formats from other FrameMaker documents and gives you a lot of control about what formats you specifically don't want to enter. Conversely, FrameMaker lets you export to several different text formats. In this release, Adobe has greatly improved its ability to export to HTML formats, and has added the ability to export to PDF and XML formats. (Unfortunately, the only mention that FrameMaker can export to XML is a bright yellow sticker on the box. You won't find any mention in the manual or in FrameMaker's online help.)

Acrobat bundled: Adobe is positioning FrameMaker as an all-in-one documentation tool for a variety of formats, and you can use the bundled Acrobat 3.0 to create hyperlinked online documents. I don't know if you can upgrade to Acrobat 4.0 if you have FrameMaker 5.5.6.

Cross-platform: FrameMaker comes in Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX versions, and you can share files between all three. At CableData we have Macintosh and Windows versions of FrameMaker, and they work together quite well.

...and Weaknesses
FrameMaker also comes with some weaknesses that you should be aware of.

Not for creating online help: FrameMaker does a good job of producing documents for various formats, but it doesn't export to the Windows help format. Fortunately, there's a product called WebWorks Publisher from Quadralay Corp. that fills this important niche. Watch for a review of WebWorks Publisher in the near future in Sacra Blue.

Graphics problems: When you export a graphic with text, the technical writing services department has found that the imported graphic doesn't look as it's supposed to. We've gotten around the problem with how we produce the text in Canvas, our department's graphics tool, and with cutting and pasting from Canvas into an anchored frame in FrameMaker. Graphics importing really needs work.

PDF online help: Adobe has put its online help in PDF format, and I find that it's much harder to use than Windows help. You can't search for anything by keyword; topics are divided as they are in the printed manual, and you can search for topics by keyword. If you have a high-resolution monitor, you'll also find the index text rather small.

Conclusion
FrameMaker is a niche program that provides the power of word processing with the flexibility of desktop publishing. There's been speculation that FrameMaker may not have a future since it hasn't been as well publicized as some of Adobe's other offerings. Various sources have told me that isn't true, so let's hope that Adobe's next new product announcement will be about FrameMaker and give new life to this valuable product.

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