Re: The case against M$ Word

["Chris Morton" <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Re: FM longevity....that's *exactly* the way I see it, Gary.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 2:53 PM, Gary Schnabl
<gSchnabl -at- livernoisyards -dot- com>wrote:

> Combs, Richard wrote:
> > Gary Schnabl wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Duh! Seek out a reputable eBay "merchant" and not a used-camel dealer.
> >> There are a number there on eBay who pick up and resell unregistered,
> >> legal copies of proprietary software.
> >>
> >
> > Adobe's full retail price for FM 8 is $899. A quick Ebay search
> > (http://tinyurl.com/5fjbsf) revealed that the reputable merchants are
> > selling unused copies of FM 7.0 (3 versions old) for $575 - $750. That
> > doesn't strike me as particularly cheap. If you intend to upgrade from
> > that, it makes no sense at all.
> >
> > Oddly, somebody's selling _upgrades_ to FM 8 for $342.78, above Adobe's
> > list price of $299.
> >
> > To be fair, you can get a "used" copy of FM 5.5 for UNIX for $199. And
> > the minimum bid for FM 3 for the NeXT is just $7.99. :-)
> >
> > Anyway, this discussion has been about making a case against MS Word to
> > one's superiors. So I assumed we were discussing corporate purchases for
> > technical writing staff, not personal purchases for home or free-lance
> > use. I doubt that too many corporations bigger than micro size would buy
> > their software from Ebay.
> >
> > Richard
> >
>
> It's a moot case for me about acquiring FrameMaker because I received a
> copy of FM 7 gratis through my employment as a technical editor with a
> semiconductor manufacturer over three years ago. Otherwise, I would have
> purchased my own version way before now. eBay or not. I typically find
> my legal software on eBay discounted by more than 50% from the "street"
> price. Occasionally, sellers need the money (any money) badly enough.
>
> I use FM for creating the printer's PDF for all medium to large books
> whether if their subdocuments were authored with Word or not. Conversion
> from Word is brain-dead simple. And I almost never use any direct
> formatting (manual overriding of Word styles).
>
> And Word 2007 is far better than Word 2003 for the purposes of technical
> writing or editing. Its typesetting algorithms are still better than
> what Word 2007 employs, but not near those what InDesign can do. I see
> few problems in using Word 2007, though, especially if styles are used
> everywhere in the documents. The final editor(s) could use the DTP
> packages for typesetting, and that part need not concern other writers
> or editors that use Word 2007.
>
> As to my believing that FrameMaker is nearing EOL: Adobe.com does not
> list FrameMaker among its 14 top-tier products on its home page.
> InDesign is among the top 14... To get to FrameMaker via linking from
> Adobe's home page, one must click on the More Products hyperlink. The
> next page then lists 12 major products, of which none is FrameMaker. To
> finally get to FrameMaker 8, one must click on a More Products hyperlink
> a second time and select FrameMaker 8 via a drop-down menu.
>
> Adobe will continue to include more bug fixes from FM 8 (FM 7.1, and 7.2
> to a smaller extent, was essentially a bug fix that needed to be paid
> for...) and incorporate enough new "features" in order to justify or
> entice its users to pay for an upgrade or two. After a passage of time,
> there will few reasons to offer both InDesign and FrameMaker as separate
> standalone apps because Adobe will place a higher priority on InDesign
> due to competition. Ergo, InDesign CSx will coopt FrameMaker's remaining
> functions and users, and FrameMaker will be dropped.
>
> Gary
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ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
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authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
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