How many FM users are there?

[Diane Gaskill]

Hi all,

I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am creating a 
comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I need to have a general 
idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  FM has been in use since the 
late 1980s and I would estimate at least 100K seats.  If anyone on the list can 
provide an more accurate number, I'd really appreciate the information.  
Incidentally, PTC says they have 20K installed seats.

Thanks,

Diane
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Re: How many FM users are there?

[Bodvar Bjorgvinsson]

Hi Diane,

Adobe should know how many licenses they have _sold_. How many are
_using_ FM is a different matter. I guess they are somewhat fewer. I
base that assumption on the fact that you can get used FM second hand
(including all paperwork). This leads me to assume that a (small?)
number of licenses are no longer in use.

Also, CDs get lost and Adobe probably do not want to replace a lost CD
even if you have all the information about the CD, the invoice etc. At
least, I don't know anyone who has tried to get a software company of
this size to send a replacement CD.

Example from my experience:
My IT department lost our copy of Adobe CS1 (which is 50-100% more
expensive here than in the US, thanks to the centuries old feudal
system these so-called International businesses commonly use -- they
sometimes seem not to have heard of the Internet!), but luckily it
showed up again nearly a year later.
They have lost a lot of other software CDs. Luckily most of those are
outdated anyway.

I guess not many are using illegal copies of FM. FM is simply not a
kind of software that you can use powerfully on your own without a lot
of learning and support. Which makes it awkward, to say the least, to
use an illegal copy.

Start a project to have FM users register as users (anonymous to
Adobe, of course, if there should be any people actually trying to use
an illegal copy!).

However, I guess that this would be a difficult task, and, many, as
with our company, are using it only temporarily, being replaced by
others etc; which would probably mean that we could only expect a
maximum of 1/4-1/2 of the actual users to register. I would guess even
fewer.

grinSo why not get the guys who write Numbers to come up with a
formula to calculate the users. It takes less than an hour on the
show! /grin

Seats here: 6. Users: 3 (for now).

Bodvar Bjorgvinsson
Iceland

On 5/9/07, Diane Gaskill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Hi all,

I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am creating a 
comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I need to have a general 
idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  FM has been in use since the 
late 1980s and I would estimate at least 100K seats.  If anyone on the list can 
provide an more accurate number, I'd really appreciate the information.  
Incidentally, PTC says they have 20K installed seats.

Thanks,

Diane
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Re: How many FM users are there?

[Alan Houser]

At the 1999 FrameUsers Conference in Minneapolis, somebody posed this 
question to Adobe co-founder and then-CEO John Warnock in a public Q/A 
session. He responded that FrameMaker had about a half-million 
installed seats worldwide.


This information is a bit old, but it is the only public disclosure of 
FrameMaker's installed base that I have ever encountered.


-Alan

Diane Gaskill wrote:

Hi all,

I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am creating a 
comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I need to have a general 
idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  FM has been in use since the 
late 1980s and I would estimate at least 100K seats.  If anyone on the list can 
provide an more accurate number, I'd really appreciate the information.  
Incidentally, PTC says they have 20K installed seats.

Thanks,

Diane
  


--
Alan Houser, President
Group Wellesley, Inc.
412-363-3481
www.groupwellesley.com

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Re: How many FM users are there?

[Peter Gold]

FrameMaker licenses on UNIX can be shared or personal. 
Users can check out a shared license when they need it, then 
check it back in when they're done. Depending on demand, the 
number of users of a single shared license can vary, so it's 
difficult to be precise.


Personal licenses are assigned to an individual login. This 
can be an individual user, or a login that can be used by more 
than one user, but the restriction is one logged-in user at a 
time. Again, this makes a precise estimate difficult to attain.


A shared licenses costs about twice the price of a personal 
licenses.


Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices




Diane Gaskill wrote:

Hi all,

I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am 
creating a comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I 
need to have a general idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  
FM has been in use since the late 1980s and I would estimate at least 
100K seats.  If anyone on the list can provide an more accurate 
number, I'd really appreciate the information.  Incidentally, PTC says 
they have 20K installed seats.


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Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit
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Re: How many FM users are there?

[Chris Borokowski]

My guess is that there are some exceptions to this.
People who routinely try out software are good at
reading online help and figuring out software even
more complex (gasp!) than FrameMaker. This is not an
endorsement of piracy, but were I Adobe, I might
encourage this behavior, because people who become
addicted to software, as soon as they're in a business
environment which will pay for it, speak up loudly and
clearly to request it. That is why Apple was so
successful giving computers away at low or no cost to
schools, and Microsoft was so successful with their
student copies of Microsoft Office (on the path to
world domination).

--- Bodvar Bjorgvinsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I guess not many are using illegal copies of FM. FM
 is simply not a
 kind of software that you can use powerfully on your
 own without a lot
 of learning and support. Which makes it awkward, to
 say the least, to
 use an illegal copy.


User Interface design blog
http://user-advocacy.blogspot.com/
Code::Design::UI::Consulting
http://www.dionysius.com/


 

Be a PS3 game guru.
Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/platform?platform=120121
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Migrate Problem from WWP 6-Pro to WWP 2003 -Pro (x-posted to wwp-users)

[Stephen C. Gillespie Sr]

Greetings,

 

I am trying to help a colleague migrate her old WWP6 Pro projects to WWP
2003 Pro, so she can use FM 7 and structured files.

 

When she did the migrate the project, NONE of her 'macros' came across . is
there any way to get the project upgraded to WWP 2003, other than copypaste
all the macro code?

 

I know that Quadralay is no longer supporting WWP 8, in favor of ePP, but we
are not ready to go there, now.

 

Apprec any help!

 

Steve Gillespie

FedEx Express

Memphis, TN

 


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Productivity Gains from Structured Authoring

[John Sgammato]

Does anyone know a reliable source for metrics on productivity gains
from structured authoring with FrameMaker?
I need some numbers to use to convince my boss that it is the way to go.
I am thinking of something along the lines of output pages per writer. 
I appreciate any help.

John Sgammato
Principal Technical Writer
Imprivata, Inc.
[v] (781) 674-2441

www.imprivata.com

OneSign is single sign-on for the rest of us, with an innovative
technology that makes adding almost any application a snap,
doing away with manually scripted login procedures, and saving
time and money. 
- Information Security, Products of the Year, 2006
 
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Re: How many FM users are there?

[Susan Modlin]

Hi Bodvar,

Given that many FrameMaker users are in the software industry (at least here in 
Northern California), the number of unused licenses may be higher than you 
think. For example, as the manager of the Pubs department at Company A, I 
bought nine licenses for my group. The company was acquired and my entire 
department was eventually laid off. At Company B, I bought three FrameMaker 
licenses for my group, only to have the same thing happen again. I'm now at 
Company C, where I bought yet another copy. I also have the personal copy I 
bought after one of the layoffs. So of the 14 licenses I've bought in the last 
7 years, only two are currently in use. 
 
...Susan


Susan Frahm Modlin
Lithium Technologies
www.lithium.com


- Original Message 
From: Bodvar Bjorgvinsson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Diane Gaskill [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: framers@lists.frameusers.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2007 3:20:53 AM
Subject: Re: How many FM users are there?

Hi Diane,

Adobe should know how many licenses they have _sold_. How many are
_using_ FM is a different matter. I guess they are somewhat fewer. I
base that assumption on the fact that you can get used FM second hand
(including all paperwork). This leads me to assume that a (small?)
number of licenses are no longer in use.








__
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
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Re: How many FM users are there?

[Peter Gold]

Susan Modlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Hi Bodvar,

Given that many FrameMaker users are in the software
industry (at least here in Northern California), the number
of unused licenses may be higher than you think. For
example, as the manager of the Pubs department at Company
A, I bought nine licenses for my group. The company was
acquired and my entire department was eventually laid off.
At Company B, I bought three FrameMaker licenses for my
group, only to have the same thing happen again. I'm now at
Company C, where I bought yet another copy. I also have the
personal copy I bought after one of the layoffs. So of the
14 licenses I've bought in the last 7 years, only two are
currently in use.




This reminds me of a case of applying scientific method 
results in the wrong conclusion:


Monday night - drank Scotch on the rocks until passing out.
Tuesday morning - royal hangover.
Tuesday night - drank vodka on the rocks until passing out.
Wednesday morning - royal hangover.
Wednesday night - drank gin on the rocks until passing out.
Thursday morning - royal hangover.
Thursday night - drank Irish on the rocks until passing out.
Friday morning - royal hangover.

Conclusion: the common factor is ice cubes. Leave them out of 
drinks to avoid morning hangovers.


Moral, perhaps? Be careful when buying lots of FrameMaker 
licenses.


Perhaps companies that are late FrameMaker adopters are too 
precarious already to benefit from it?MG


Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices
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Re: Productivity Gains from Structured Authoring

[Daniel Emory]

--- John Sgammato [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I am thinking of something along the lines of output
 pages per writer. I appreciate any help.
===
Using an ROI estimate to justify changing over to a
structured approach is definitely the right way to go.
But coming up with a number is complex. The
fundamental purpose of structure is to greatly improve
the management of your legacy documents, as well as
improving the productivy of writers creating new
content.

Although output pages per writer (in the case where
completely new content is being created) definitely
shows gains in productivity (after writers have become
familiarized with structured authoring) it's only part
of the ROI number.

Here are some other, equally important, factors needed
to come up with a realistic ROI:

* The structure view, the element catalog and metadata
(attributes) provide powerful new tools for
systematically managing information. For instance, you
can quickly locate chunks of information needing
updates, as well as facilitating information re-use,
using more systematic Find or Find/Change operations.
For instance, you can use Find to locate all instances
of a particular attribute value within all instances
of a particular element name.

* By reimporting a document's EDD into itself with
Remove Format Overrides turned on, all format
overrides of the EDD-specified formats are removed.
This capability eliminates any necessity for editors
to tediiously find and fix such overrides. Also, both
authors and edictors can quickly use the Validate
command to find and correct all anomalies in the
structure.

* A validated structured document with all illegal
format overrides removed assures that conversions of
FrameMaker structured document to other output forms
can be accomplished successfully.

* The ultimate ROI value is the certainty that, at
some future date, you can successfully store your
legacy documents in a content management system (CMS),
which, I believe, will become the gold standard even
for small companies. If you continue to produce
unstructured documents, you assuredly will incur huge
conversion costs, and thus an estimate of what that
cost will be should legitimately should be included in
the ROI.


  
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Arbortext

[Isabelle lopez]

Hello Framers,
 
Our initial plan was to convert our legal publications from Interleaf
to Frame. We met with a company that suggested that we go the PDF to XML
route instead, using Arbortext Editor from PTC. We're curious to see
what you Framers think of this idea. Also, does anyone have experience
with PTC generally or Arbortext specifically to give us a rundown of
pros and cons? 
 
Thank you very much.
Isabelle Lopez
SBOT - TexasBarBooks
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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How many FM users are there?

[Diane Gaskill]

Hi all,

I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am creating a 
comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I need to have a general 
idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  FM has been in use since the 
late 1980s and I would estimate at least 100K seats.  If anyone on the list can 
provide an more accurate number, I'd really appreciate the information.  
Incidentally, PTC says they have 20K installed seats.

Thanks,

Diane

How many FM users are there?

[Bodvar Bjorgvinsson]

Hi Diane,

Adobe should know how many licenses they have _sold_. How many are
_using_ FM is a different matter. I guess they are somewhat fewer. I
base that assumption on the fact that you can get used FM second hand
(including all paperwork). This leads me to assume that a (small?)
number of licenses are no longer in use.

Also, CDs get lost and Adobe probably do not want to replace a lost CD
even if you have all the information about the CD, the invoice etc. At
least, I don't know anyone who has tried to get a software company of
this size to send a replacement CD.

Example from my experience:
My IT department lost our copy of Adobe CS1 (which is 50-100% more
expensive here than in the US, thanks to the centuries old feudal
system these so-called "International businesses" commonly use -- they
sometimes seem not to have heard of the Internet!), but luckily it
showed up again nearly a year later.
They have lost a lot of other software CDs. Luckily most of those are
outdated anyway.

I guess not many are using illegal copies of FM. FM is simply not a
kind of software that you can use powerfully on your own without a lot
of learning and support. Which makes it awkward, to say the least, to
use an illegal copy.

Start a project to have FM users register as users (anonymous to
Adobe, of course, if there should be any people actually trying to use
an illegal copy!).

However, I guess that this would be a difficult task, and, many, as
with our company, are using it only temporarily, being replaced by
others etc; which would probably mean that we could only expect a
maximum of 1/4-1/2 of the actual users to register. I would guess even
fewer.

So why not get the guys who write "Numbers" to come up with a
formula to calculate the users. It takes less than an hour on the
show! 

Seats here: 6. Users: 3 (for now).

Bodvar Bjorgvinsson
Iceland

On 5/9/07, Diane Gaskill  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am creating a 
> comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I need to have a 
> general idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  FM has been in use 
> since the late 1980s and I would estimate at least 100K seats.  If anyone on 
> the list can provide an more accurate number, I'd really appreciate the 
> information.  Incidentally, PTC says they have 20K installed seats.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Diane
> ___
>
>

How many FM users are there?

[Alan Houser]

At the 1999 FrameUsers Conference in Minneapolis, somebody posed this 
question to Adobe co-founder and then-CEO John Warnock in a public Q/A 
session. He responded that FrameMaker had "about a half-million" 
installed seats worldwide.

This information is a bit old, but it is the only public disclosure of 
FrameMaker's installed base that I have ever encountered.

-Alan

Diane Gaskill wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am creating a 
> comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I need to have a 
> general idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  FM has been in use 
> since the late 1980s and I would estimate at least 100K seats.  If anyone on 
> the list can provide an more accurate number, I'd really appreciate the 
> information.  Incidentally, PTC says they have 20K installed seats.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Diane
>   

-- 
Alan Houser, President
Group Wellesley, Inc.
412-363-3481
www.groupwellesley.com

How many FM users are there?

[Peter Gold]

FrameMaker licenses on UNIX can be "shared" or "personal." 
Users can check out a shared license when they need it, then 
check it back in when they're done. Depending on demand, the 
number of users of a single shared license can vary, so it's 
difficult to be precise.

Personal licenses are assigned to an individual login. This 
can be an individual user, or a login that can be used by more 
than one user, but the restriction is one logged-in user at a 
time. Again, this makes a precise estimate difficult to attain.

A shared licenses costs about twice the price of a personal 
licenses.

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices


> 
> Diane Gaskill wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I know Adobe keeps all of their numbers a Big Secret, but I am 
>> creating a comparison spreadsheet in my research on FM vs AT and I 
>> need to have a general idea of how many FM seats have been installed.  
>> FM has been in use since the late 1980s and I would estimate at least 
>> 100K seats.  If anyone on the list can provide an more accurate 
>> number, I'd really appreciate the information.  Incidentally, PTC says 
>> they have 20K installed seats.

How many FM users are there?

[Chris Borokowski]

My guess is that there are some exceptions to this.
People who routinely try out software are good at
reading online help and figuring out software even
more complex (gasp!) than FrameMaker. This is not an
endorsement of piracy, but were I Adobe, I might
encourage this behavior, because people who become
addicted to software, as soon as they're in a business
environment which will pay for it, speak up loudly and
clearly to request it. That is why Apple was so
successful giving computers away at low or no cost to
schools, and Microsoft was so successful with their
student copies of Microsoft Office (on the path to
world domination).

--- Bodvar Bjorgvinsson  wrote:

> I guess not many are using illegal copies of FM. FM
> is simply not a
> kind of software that you can use powerfully on your
> own without a lot
> of learning and support. Which makes it awkward, to
> say the least, to
> use an illegal copy.


User Interface design blog
http://user-advocacy.blogspot.com/
Code::Design::UI::Consulting
http://www.dionysius.com/




Be a PS3 game guru.
Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/platform?platform=120121

Migrate Problem from WWP 6-Pro to WWP 2003 -Pro (x-posted to wwp-users)

[Stephen C. Gillespie Sr]

Greetings,



I am trying to help a colleague migrate her old WWP6 Pro projects to WWP
2003 Pro, so she can use FM 7 and structured files.



When she did the migrate the project, NONE of her 'macros' came across . is
there any way to get the project upgraded to WWP 2003, other than copy
all the macro code?



I know that Quadralay is no longer supporting WWP 8, in favor of ePP, but we
are not ready to go there, now.



Apprec any help!



Steve Gillespie

FedEx Express

Memphis, TN

Productivity Gains from Structured Authoring

[John Sgammato]

Does anyone know a reliable source for metrics on productivity gains
from structured authoring with FrameMaker?
I need some numbers to use to convince my boss that it is the way to go.
I am thinking of something along the lines of output pages per writer. 
I appreciate any help.

John Sgammato
Principal Technical Writer
Imprivata, Inc.
[v] (781) 674-2441

www.imprivata.com

"OneSign is single sign-on for the rest of us, with an innovative
technology that makes adding almost any application a snap,
doing away with manually scripted login procedures, and saving
time and money." 
- Information Security, "Products of the Year", 2006

How many FM users are there?

[Susan Modlin]

Hi Bodvar,

Given that many FrameMaker users are in the software industry (at least here in 
Northern California), the number of unused licenses may be higher than you 
think. For example, as the manager of the Pubs department at Company A, I 
bought nine licenses for my group. The company was acquired and my entire 
department was eventually laid off. At Company B, I bought three FrameMaker 
licenses for my group, only to have the same thing happen again. I'm now at 
Company C, where I bought yet another copy. I also have the personal copy I 
bought after one of the layoffs. So of the 14 licenses I've bought in the last 
7 years, only two are currently in use. 

...Susan


Susan Frahm Modlin
Lithium Technologies
www.lithium.com


- Original Message 
From: Bodvar Bjorgvinsson 
To: Diane Gaskill 
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2007 3:20:53 AM
Subject: Re: How many FM users are there?

Hi Diane,

Adobe should know how many licenses they have _sold_. How many are
_using_ FM is a different matter. I guess they are somewhat fewer. I
base that assumption on the fact that you can get used FM second hand
(including all paperwork). This leads me to assume that a (small?)
number of licenses are no longer in use.








__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

How many FM users are there?

[Peter Gold]

Susan Modlin  wrote:

> Hi Bodvar,
> 
> Given that many FrameMaker users are in the software
> industry (at least here in Northern California), the number
> of unused licenses may be higher than you think. For
> example, as the manager of the Pubs department at Company
> A, I bought nine licenses for my group. The company was
> acquired and my entire department was eventually laid off.
> At Company B, I bought three FrameMaker licenses for my
> group, only to have the same thing happen again. I'm now at
> Company C, where I bought yet another copy. I also have the
> personal copy I bought after one of the layoffs. So of the
> 14 licenses I've bought in the last 7 years, only two are
> currently in use.
> 


This reminds me of a case of applying scientific method 
results in the wrong conclusion:

Monday night - drank Scotch on the rocks until passing out.
Tuesday morning - royal hangover.
Tuesday night - drank vodka on the rocks until passing out.
Wednesday morning - royal hangover.
Wednesday night - drank gin on the rocks until passing out.
Thursday morning - royal hangover.
Thursday night - drank Irish on the rocks until passing out.
Friday morning - royal hangover.

Conclusion: the common factor is ice cubes. Leave them out of 
drinks to avoid morning hangovers.

Moral, perhaps? Be careful when buying lots of FrameMaker 
licenses.

Perhaps companies that are late FrameMaker adopters are too 
precarious already to benefit from it?M

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

Productivity Gains from Structured Authoring

[Daniel Emory]

--- John Sgammato  wrote:
> I am thinking of something along the lines of output
> pages per writer. I appreciate any help.
===
Using an ROI estimate to justify changing over to a
structured approach is definitely the right way to go.
But coming up with a number is complex. The
fundamental purpose of structure is to greatly improve
the management of your legacy documents, as well as
improving the productivy of writers creating new
content.

Although output pages per writer (in the case where
completely new content is being created) definitely
shows gains in productivity (after writers have become
familiarized with structured authoring) it's only part
of the ROI number.

Here are some other, equally important, factors needed
to come up with a realistic ROI:

* The structure view, the element catalog and metadata
(attributes) provide powerful new tools for
systematically managing information. For instance, you
can quickly locate chunks of information needing
updates, as well as facilitating information re-use,
using more systematic Find or Find/Change operations.
For instance, you can use Find to locate all instances
of a particular attribute value within all instances
of a particular element name.

* By reimporting a document's EDD into itself with
Remove Format Overrides turned on, all format
overrides of the EDD-specified formats are removed.
This capability eliminates any necessity for editors
to tediiously find and fix such overrides. Also, both
authors and edictors can quickly use the Validate
command to find and correct all anomalies in the
structure.

* A validated structured document with all illegal
format overrides removed assures that conversions of
FrameMaker structured document to other output forms
can be accomplished successfully.

* The ultimate ROI value is the certainty that, at
some future date, you can successfully store your
legacy documents in a content management system (CMS),
which, I believe, will become the gold standard even
for small companies. If you continue to produce
unstructured documents, you assuredly will incur huge
conversion costs, and thus an estimate of what that
cost will be should legitimately should be included in
the ROI.

Arbortext

[Isabelle lopez]

Hello Framers,

Our initial plan was to convert our legal publications from Interleaf
to Frame. We met with a company that suggested that we go the PDF to XML
route instead, using Arbortext Editor from PTC. We're curious to see
what you Framers think of this idea. Also, does anyone have experience
with PTC generally or Arbortext specifically to give us a rundown of
pros and cons? 

Thank you very much.
Isabelle Lopez
SBOT - TexasBarBooks
ilopez at texasbar.com