To add to Alan's comments, I've had numerous aerospace clients who choose Arbortext for editing, but Frame for output.
The cost of output from Arbortext (developing XSL-FO) can be much greater than the whole FM install and dev, and not terribly flexible. In the pre-Frame 7.2 world, XML was interpreted both in and out of Framemaker and stored in FM Binary. This is why folks would edit content directly using AT (integrity of XML), but draw into FM for output (less cost/time/effort) These days, Frame can work directly with the XML, and storing as .fm is strictly optional. IMO, this undercuts much of AT's sales pitch. Other considerations might include both current and potential content management integration. BTW, anyone know if ArborText has any sort of DITA implementation? -Matt Sullivan GRAFIX Training, Inc. An Adobe Authorized Training Center www.grafixtraining.com 888 882-2819 -----Original Message----- From: framers-bounces+matt=grafixtraining....@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces+matt=grafixtraining.com at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Alan Houser Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 7:03 AM To: framers at lists.frameusers.com Subject: Re: Frame vs Arbortext Your experience is quite common. Arbortext's sales team is really, really good. They seem to know how to find the right people in an organization (not the tech pubs group or even the tech pubs manager) and sell into the workgroup or enterprise level. On the other hand, Adobe's FrameMaker sales team is, well...what sales team? On the other hand, FrameMaker continues to have very strong support within tech pubs organizations. The outcome of the Arbortext vs. FrameMaker decision is often decided (rightly or wrongly) by the strength of this grass-roots support. There are several layers of issues here. One is the "XML" or "not XML" decision. If your business requirements warrant a migration to XML, then Arbortext is an option. Otherwise, it is not. Structured FrameMaker is another option for XML publishing. But I would make the "XML" or "not XML" decision first, independent of the tools choice. Probably the single biggest appeal of structured FrameMaker in an XML environment is the ability to generate PDFs from the desktop, using a (relatively) simple mechanism for defining publishing templates. One can argue whether a FrameMaker EDD is "simple", but I prefer it over the XML alternative (XSL-FO) in the majority of cases, especially if PDF is your primary output format. -Alan Diane Gaskill wrote: > Hello Frameratti, > > Remember the old days when we had debates and comparisons between the dreaded Word and Frame? Well, now it seems that the new competitor is Arbortext. I had my manager convinced to switch from Word to FM, even got the ok to build the templates (done), when along comes a VP in one of our offshore offices who thinks using Arbortext is better and convinces my manager to have us look at it too. > > I did some digging and found a really old (1999) comparison on Shlomo's website. Nice, but both tools have changed considerably since then and the comparison is no longer valid. Sooo, I am wondering if anyone on the list knows of a more recent comparison of the two tools. Not that I want to go to Arbortext, mind you, but I need to check for the boss. > > BTW, the company that now owns and markets ArbotText did not invent it (sounds familiar, huh). They came here and made a presentation. Turns out that the GUI is _not_ actually WYSIWYG and they told us that we have to print it to PDF to see what the page really looks like. If that is true, we might be better off with Word (if that is possible). Reminds me of the olden days of man pages and troff/nroff on Unix. > > Thanks in advance for any help. > > Best, > > Diane > -- Alan Houser, President Group Wellesley, Inc. 412-363-3481 www.groupwellesley.com _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as matt at grafixtraining.com. Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/matt%40grafixtraining.co m Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
