Thanks, Klaus: I first encountered FrameMaker3 on a Mac computer when I started as a technical writer at Sybase in 1989, a week after the Loma Prieta earthquake that flattened the Cypress highway ramp which exited a few blocks from the company's Emeryville, CA, headquarters. The quake hit when I was swimming in the pool behind my San Jose house, thinking that in a few days I'd be starting a new long daily commute, and taking that exit ramp to my new job Suddenly, the Earth moved, sloshing me nearly out of the pool, and instantly, 50 miles of damage along the tectonic fault connected me to my new workplace!
At that time, the tech pubs department was evaluating FM and other new publishing tools, while continuing to create, edit, layout, and publish its user manuals on Sun text-based workstations, using a customized flavor of *xroff. *Some years later, on a tech-writer's or FrameMaker forum, I read an allegedly-factual translation of the familiar "Lorum Ipsum" placeholder text, which, the poster claimed, validated that ancient scribes, the tech writers of old had written it, because it seemed to say, "we love to beat ourselves with sticks." It took me back to writing and marking-up text in *xroff.* After I became a certified FM trainer, in 1995, I took a full-on week-long FM+SGML training course on the eighth-floor of Adobe's San Jose headquarters. Just as the instructor projected a slide for the sample chapter titled, "The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake," BINGO!! The building started quaking. For those who'd traveled cross-country, it was momentary horror. Over the sounds of car alarms rising from the outside parking lots, we acclimated Californians calmed them down, and Adobe rolled out refreshment carts. BUT, when we got back to class, the instructor "corrected" the chapter title to, "The 1995 San Jose Earthquake." The humor did its job. But, I'd never since been able to present the training material without telling the story. Reading David Murray's FrameMaker history article reminded me of yet one more earthquake-ish connection, namely the effect FM had and has continued to have on technical publishing. One of the earliest FrameMaker adopters was CERN, the European research center responsible for so much basic scientific discovery. If verifying the existence of the Higgs boson doesn't count as a tectonic shift in the Earth's knowledge of particle physics, what does? Research is useless if it's not well-documented and shared. FM has deserves credit for enabling CERN's researchers to publish their work. So, here's to FrameMaker's founders, and those who joined the team and accreted their knowledge around the "how can this be done better?" irritation at the core, that started the creation of a pearly solution. Yes, we've learned to live with and love FM's irregularities and bumpiness. But remember, also, to credit those who've persisted in keeping alive long-running pleas for features that are still in the "to be addressed in some future release" queue. On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 5:25 AM Klaus Daube <kl...@daube.ch> wrote: > Friends of FrameMaker, > > Today I got a mail from David Hemmendinger (Associate Editor-in-chief, > IEEE Annals of > the History of Computing) with two corrections for my web-page about FM's > history. > > The wonderful surplus of this mail is the link to the full article by > David Murray on > the history of FrameMaker. The article > (http://walden-family.com/david-murray/frame-posted.pdf) will will appear > in the 2019 > July-Sept issue of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing > (http://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an). > > For the first time we have genuine information about the early days of FM. > Klaus > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Klaus Daube Phone: +41-44-381 37 77 > Schäracher 11 Mail: kl...@daube.ch > CH-8053 Zürich Web: www.daube.ch > > > _______________________________________________ > > This message is from the Framers mailing list > > Send messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com > Visit the list's homepage at http://www.frameusers.com > Archives located at > http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/ > Subscribe and unsubscribe at > http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com > Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com > > _______________________________________________ This message is from the Framers mailing list Send messages to framers@lists.frameusers.com Visit the list's homepage at http://www.frameusers.com Archives located at http://www.mail-archive.com/framers%40lists.frameusers.com/ Subscribe and unsubscribe at http://lists.frameusers.com/listinfo.cgi/framers-frameusers.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com