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Wow -- thanks, Peter, for that very useful analysis. The conditional
text and cross-references would be important for us. None of the other
missing pieces you mentioned are deal-breakers. Based on what you've
presented, it sounds as though it wouldn't take all that much for Indy
to outstrip Frame and become an even more robust alternative. Makes one
wonder about the merits of going to FM 8 versus making do until and if
InDesign catches up. Do you happen to know when the next major release
of Indy is likely?
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Peter Gold
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 5:29 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: InDesign vs. Frame
Rumor, speculation, guesswork, incompletely-researched assertions, and
opinions based on experience with earlier versions of InDesign or
incomplete recollection, aren't acceptable in professionally-written
documentation, - yet, IMO, these unreliable reporting techniques
characterize many recent postings on this topic.
Perhaps these notes will help when comparing FrameMaker and InDesign.
Some new or improved features in InDesign CS3 (aka InDesign 5)
include:
* Paragraph auto-numbering and numbered lists that can be maintained
independently of each other, and can be interrupted, nested, and carried
across files in a book.
* Book files are no longer limited to 100 documents.
* Variables that can be used for running headers.
* Quick keystroke invocation of named paragraph, character, table, cell,
and object styles; invocation of scripts, and all menu commands.
* Improved XML abilities.
* Ability to export HTML for use in Web-creation tools
* Importable master pages.
* Find/Replace now supports GREP operations - regular expression
matching and manipulation, saved search queries, and finding object
styles.
* Importing of InDesign documents into InDesign documents; the imported
document can contain nested InDesign documents.
Changed source documents are updated in the container documents.
Some features that were implemented in earlier releases include:
* Nearly-infinite multiple undo
* Story editor for text entry and editing
* Multiple document window views
* Platform-specific and platform-independent scripting languages -
AppleScript, Visual Basic, and JavaScript
* Unicode and OpenType support
* "Smart" auto-page numbers that display and update "continued on
page..." and "continued from page..." references for text flow jumps.
* Saved workspaces (arrangements and visibility of tools and
panels.)
* Saved user-defined keystroke command sets.
The term "long document features" is vague and confusing. It's more
useful and accurate to simply name the features.
For examaple, InDesign has these features and abilities that are often
considered "long-document" tools:
* Books that manage multiple component files
* Tables of contents and indexes across books
* Spelling check and find/replace across books
* The ability to synchronize paragraph, character, table, cell, and
object styles across books
* The ability to hide or display notes (InCopy plug-ins)
* Bookmarks and hyperlinks that export to PDF
* Multiple-page spreads
Some "long-document" features that InDesign currently lacks are:
* Cross-references (a free third-party script implements updatable
page-number cross-references, using InDesign's
hyperlinks)
* Finely-granular variables for running heads (no FrameMaker-like
building blocks)
* Multiple indexes
* Automatic new-page creation when typing fills a page.
However, when placing (importing) content, one option is to
automatically create as many new pages as are needed to hold the content
with one click.
* Equation editor
* Conditional text
* Tools to directly create help systems. However, some help-system
creation tools can work with exported XML, HTML, or RTF.
One's ability to master FrameMaker can't be "built in a day."
It's not just because FrameMaker is a large and complicated application,
but also because the range of technical-writing tasks it's used for is
also large and complicated.
The same holds true for InDesign. You can judge its suitability for your
needs by working with the free evaluation download and joining an Adobe
InDesign User-to-User forum.
HTH
________________
Regards,
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices
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