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FrameMaker 6 is a very evolutionary upgrade, not a revolutionary one from
FrameMaker 5.5. FrameMaker 6.0 might more accurately be called FrameMaker
5.6.0. IMHO, it is worth the $225 upgrade from 5.5, however.
Certainly, FrameMaker 6 boasts long overdue book-wide features, like
spell-checking, search and replace, and the like. Plus, you can re-order and
rename chapters by dragging them in the book view. You will appreciate these
features plus the new <$chapnum> variable.
So, you'll save hours on book-wide changes, it's Word filters might be a
little, but not a lot better.
The only reason *not* to get FrameMaker 6 is if you need to roundtrip docs
between FrameMaker 6 and earlier versions of FrameMaker. FrameMaker 6, like
all other versions of FrameMaker, does this via MIF and so the process is
not that efficient. Thus, use FrameMaker 6 on new projects if you are not
sharing files with FrameMaker 5.5 or earlier. Use FrameMaker 6 to upgrade
legacy docs as long as you don't plan to work on them in FrameMaker 5.5 as
well; you can . . . of course . . . but why?
Cheers,
Sean
sean -at- quodata -dot- com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Amanda Nance [SMTP:Amanda -dot- Nance -at- VITALPS -dot- COM]
>
> Has anyone had to justify the cost of a FrameMaker upgrade (from 5.5 or
> any
> other) to the purse-holders of your company? How did you do it? What
> specific improvements to 6.0 improve the productivity of tech writers?
>
> For example, I've heard that 5.5 won't do global updates on a whole book
> and
> 6.0 will. For any department that needs to change a tag in thousands of
> pages of documentation, the global update improvement could save hours of
> labor costs.
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