Hi Bill >I'm having a hard time understanding why so many folks are becoming so >emotional over Adobe as of late. I mean, yes, they make a tool I use, >but it's only one of 14 tools I use regularly.
It was a piece of anti-serendipitous marketing that rates alongside that of my gas supplier, who recently put the gas up to its highest-known-ever price via an 'emergency surcharge', then the following week sent me a latter telling me how grateful I should be that they'd pegged the prices until 2006. Think feet, shooting, large calibre, multi-barrel. Ok, maybe I'm over-reacting a little, but I do feel bitter, very bitter, about the demise of Mac FrameMaker, and by extension about Adobe's 'support' and promotion of FrameMaker generally. Prior to the Chautauqua, we were drip-fed by NDA-signatories about 'good news' that was worth waiting for, but I fail to see where it was. Yes, I too use lots and lots of tools regularly (including InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat), but if I had to specify one that was 120% mission-critical to my own work, it would be FrameMaker. I therefore do feel bitter about the fact the Adobe can commission an on-line survey, no doubt at considerable cost, that neither mentions FrameMaker nor gives you any opportunity to rate its importance or give feedback on Adobe's handling of the product. All the questions were about CS, Acrobat, web development, graphics and corporate doc management tools. It's just an indication of Adobe corporate marketing-think, and it depresses me. >If Adobe or any of the other vendors decides to kill a product or change >direction, I'm certainly not going to take it personally... Am I missing some >kind of symbiotic life-bond with FrameMaker or something??? Yes, with the greatest respect, I think you are. If Microsoft decided to kill Word, or Adobe decided to kill Acrobat, or Nisus decided to kill Express, or Macromedia decided to kill DreamWeaver, or whatever, I'd just think 'Oh what the heck' and find a replacement. But there are a few - a very few - tools for which no practical replacement exists in specific work areas. Excel is one, MarketCircle's Daylite is, for me in the Mac world, another, but head and shoulders above them all is FrameMaker. I get work *just because* it's in FrameMaker. I know, like and respect the tool, because it unfailingly allows me to get the job done and never lets me down. That's why I care so much about its future, and why I'm so irritated and worried about its diminishing platform coverage. It's a bit like telling a mechanic that the future supply of spanners was in doubt. The 'Mac X FrameMaker' thing is a no-hoper, I regretfully agree, I'll run FrameMaker on PC if I have to (but *why* should I have to?) but imho it's symptomatic of Adobe's general attitude to the product: they bought it in from Frame Corp and then didn't know what to do with it. When you think what Adobe could have done with FrameMaker since '95 or whenever if, instead of corporate fidgeting and off-shoring, they'd expended as many bucks on it as they spent on, say, InDesign's development... well, they'd have world-beater. >The message you copied indicated leading software brands... I would assume >that a relatively unchallenged niche tool wouldn't be a good representation of >a brand leader, but there I go being pesimistic again. ;-) 'Niche' is probably part of the problem, yes. The other 'leading software brands' mentioned in the survey were (from memory) Macromedia, Apple, IBM, a few in the corporate docs management arena that I'd not heard of, and a rag-tag of alternative PDF creation systems. Still, the survey had the good grace to ask me at the end how much I'd enjoyed completing it. (Any guesses?) -- Steve Rickaby WordMongers Ltd http://www.wordmongers.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archives: http://lists.frameusers.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?visit=framers Website: http://www.FrameUsers.com Administration: [EMAIL PROTECTED] You are subscribed to framers as: [email protected] Send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to unsubscribe.
