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Subject:Re: InDesign not a Frame substitute From:David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:27:57 -0500
Mike,
You missed my point. Acrobat Reader is not nearly as flexible as a
lightweight editor that would deal directly with Frame native files.
By contrast, Reader is a pale shadow of what a truly useful tool might
be, while Frame is far too complex to have as a day-to-day tool for
those not in the docs business.
WordPad or Word import and export to and from Frame are pitiful substitutes.
Remember: I also specified that they dropped the ball when they didn't
introduce such a "Frame Lite" version years ago, well before
OpenOffice was a gleam in *anyone's* eye.
Today, I agree with you that there are those who control the purse
strings who do not understand the incredible number of limitations a
word processor--however good--imposes on complex document authoring.
I think there is an argument as to whether Excel or PowerPoint are
"best of breed" or whether they are simply the most ubiquitous--but if
you re-read my points, Adobe lost the opportunity long ago, well
before Microsoft Office was best of anything.
Originally, Word Perfect was the dominant word processor during time
period I am referring to. Even today, there are features it has that
are superior to Word's comparable ones--if Word even *has* some of
them.
In fact, the Microsoft approach has been to continue to dump more
features into their office suite to try to justify version upgrade
income, whether or not the new features have been particularly useful.
Witness how many organizations are still using Word 97 or Word 2000,
and who see no compelling interest in upgrading.
I strongly suspect that Microsoft will make Longhorn not work so very
well with these prior versions of Office, to drive additional revenue
in upgrades to the Office version that features full Longhorn
compatibility. That would be par for the course with them.
David
On 8/18/05, Mike O. <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> David Neeley wrote:
> > In my view, Adobe dropped the ball long ago by not
> > producing a Frame-compatible but more lightweight
> > version that could be sold cheaply for engineers
> > and others who need to review documents
>
> Acrobat Reader
>
> > and write simple engineering docs and the like.
>
> WordPad... Word... OpenOffice.org
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