Hi Ant,
Probably not what you want to hear but...
Frankly, why bother. It is reinventing the wheel that Adobe decided to
let fall some years go with Frame View, et al. InDesign already has a
client application for copy editing, I see no particular reason for
Frame to have another application added to the mix when Adobe have
just spent the last several years consolidating the range of Frame
products into one.
People do their own thing now. Why would they want to change that and
give up their creative freedoms? From their standpoint you might
consider this as a corporate imposition on what it is they want to
achieve and not as a means to streamline and improve their work.
When I have wanted a client to edit and update content I have used
mif2go and exported the relevant chapter(s) as rtf. This provides the
benefit of ensuring only named styles are exported into the file,
along with named fonts, etc. Alternatively I have made a Word template
which has limited access to unwanted styles. Do you really want people
to go editing the content of your documents? Have they been trained,
and what of your own job security?
From the SME standpoint:
1, I would not want to have go out buy another word processor when I
already have one.
2, I am a business person, I know what I want and don't need to be
told. Word does what I want.
3, I have a business to run, I do not want to be bothered with having
to learn a new program to do the things I can already do with what I
already have.
4, What am I paying those guys for? Now they want me to do their work
and pay their license fees too?
I do not see that having a Frame Light version adds any particular
value to FrameMaker or to a workflow without the addition of
significant other supporting infrastructure such as versioning, which
on its own entails a server and network, and security, and hardware,
and software...
All these can be achieved with Acrobat's editing and annotation
functions. From my experience these already provide significant value,
and when added to the rtf export with mif2go, there is not a lot left
for a Frame Lite version to do.
Good luck though.
Cheers
Alan
On 22/02/2011, at 11:56 PM, Anthony Davey wrote:
Cross posted to dita-frameusers, so ignore as needed ...
I had an interesting discussion with the Frame Product Manager a few
days ago at
the London launch event for TCS3. It seems there is the motivation
to develop a
business case for 'Frame Light' which could be used by SMEs to
create and review
content, but little else.
I work in an environment where I am the only Frame user
(experimenting with 10
at the moment) in an organisation with over 100 SMEs producing
content in Word.
Most do their own thing, or come to me to 'fix' or standardise stuff
once it is
collected together.
So, I would want 'Frame Light' to allow content creation in
structured or
unstructured format (including DITA one day), but that requires the
content
provider to use only the pre-determined paragraph formats and a few
text styles
(emphasis, bold, sub- and superscript); and insert images by
reference. I can
get around a need to define conditional text by using different
paragraph format
names. All this in templates that can only be developed or altered
by full
license holders.
To support the development of a business case can you post what
(other)
functionality you would want Frame Light to have, how many licenses
you would
(ideally) want in your organisation, how many full Frame licenses
you currently
have (for comparison purposes), how you would want FL delivered
(local install,
web-based, floating licenses), and what you would want/need to pay
for it to get
it accepted as an alternative to Whatever word processing your SMEs
currently
use?
Creating more disciplined (structured), reusable, content which can
be output
with a similar look and feel, and doesn't reinvent a wheel each time
an SME puts
fingers to keyboard, is a concept which has almost reached its time
in my
organisation. Others may be close, or even ahead, so there must be
demand for
this. Please let me know.
Best regards,
Ant
--
Alan T Litchfield
AlphaByte
PO Box 1941, Auckland, 1140
New Zealand
http://www.alphabyte.co.nz
http://www.alphabyte.co.nz/beatrice
_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to framers as [email protected].
Send list messages to [email protected].
To unsubscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
or visit
http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com
Send administrative questions to [email protected]. Visit
http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
