Re: FrameMaker vs. Interleaf

["Smith, Amy" <Amy -dot- Smith -at- FMR -dot- COM>]

Greetings,

I've been a Frame user for about four years. I'm somewhat of a poster child
for it - it solved a lot of my publishing problems. I've used Frame on Unix,
Windows and Mac.
In a nutshell, this is what I like about it:

1) Platform portability. The engineers I worked with used Frame for Windows.
I'd take their files, incorporate them in the manuals that I composed on my
Sun. If I was behind or feeling energetic, I'd take the files home and work
on them on our Mac. I never had any problems porting files among the
platforms.

2) Text, tables, graphics and layout tools in one package!

3) Frame does not treat documents that include graphics as "compound"
documents. I know Interleaf used to, and I seem to remember that this caused
some storage/retrieval issues.

4) Interleaf's founders come from a typesetting background, and this is
reflected in the way that Interleaf handles documents. It's hard to explain,
and I haven't used Interleaf in some years, but here goes: you'd have to
apply styles to the text after it was composed, like newspapers are typeset.
My concern with this ,when looking at publishing packages, is that I knew
the engineers in my group would be using this package, too, and this
approach would be alien to them. Frame has more of a word-processing
approach to composing documents, and I think it was easier for them to pick
it up.

5) Frame's API makes it easy to add more functionality. I cannot speak to
this directly, as I am not a developer, but I hear good things about the
Frame Developer's Kit.

6) The book ("master document") capability is fabulous. I recently changed
jobs within my company, and I no longer use Frame at work. I have to use
Word for Windows instead, and it's master document feature pales by
comparision.

I have one problem with Frame, and that is you can't print duplex (out of
the box, anyway. I'm sure some enterprising programmer has fixed this for
their company). Perhaps this will change with Frame 5.

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Amy Smith
Documentation Specialist
Fidelity Investments

 ----------
From: Technical Writers List(059) for all Technical Communication issues
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L; SY16333
Subject: FrameMaker vs. Interleaf
Date: Thursday, June 15, 1995 1:31PM

DATE: Jun 15 12:34:54 1995 -04:00 relative to GMT
IPMessageID: 199506151724.NAA12754(a)gate3.fmr.com

FROM: Technical Writers List(059) for all Technical Communication issues

AUTHORIZED: Karen Mayer

TO: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L

SUBJECT: FrameMaker vs. Interleaf
REPLY TO: Karen(u)Mayer.TOUCH(u)TECHNOLOGY(a)NOTES.COMPUSERVE.COM

PRIORITY:
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  There are two tech writers in our small company, and right now we're
  stuck having to use Word. We are submitting a proposal for a real
  publishing system, and both of us have extensive experience using
  Interleaf. We hear, though, that FrameMaker is a comparable product, but
  neither of us knows anyone with experience using both systems.

  Does anyone out there in TWland have experience with both Interleaf and
  Frame? How would you compare the two in terms of efficiency of use,
  portability of files, cost, system resource requirements, etc.?

  Thanks,

  Karen Mayer
  Touch Technology, Inc.
  Phoenix, AZ