Adobe FrameMaker 6.0

Rating:
Summary: High-End Publishing Tool
Review: Adobe FrameMaker 6.0 is a high-end utility, which combines the functions of an advanced word processor, layout program, mathematical editor and pre-processing software for commercial printing.

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DOCUMENT-WIDE EDITING
The document structure construction tools are the most powerful feature of FrameMaker. Instead of simple overlay of text formatting, Frame also allows you to work with character and paragraph designs which, once set, can be applied to any paragraph at any time. Moreover, once you change your mind, it's sufficient to change the definition in an easy-to-use and extremely powerful and comprehensive "paragraph designer". Then, changes are applied to every paragraph of this type across the document, and to the user's joy - in all files that use this paragraph. FrameMaker makes extensive use of an additional document structure tool - the famous *.book file, which virtually binds your chapters into a book, a single, operational structural file. Apply a paragraph change to a book, and every single chapter, kept in a separate file - will reflect the change. You don't have to do it by hand, and worry that you will omit one instance or another. Automation and book-wide commands are the ultimate strength of this program. A special Character Designer allows you to apply an additional layer for a selected set of words or text objects in your document. This is handy for casual editing. The Paragraph Designer and Character Designer, which appear in Adobe-unique floating boxes, are your everyday working tools.

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DOCUMENT STRUCTURE
In addition to powerful editing tools, FrameMaker makes extensive use of document-layers, much in the vein of Photoshop. Except the document body, you keep separate files, called the Master Pages, which are the utilizable templates affecting all body pages. A master page defines document-uniform layout properties like page size, position, header, footer, page numbering, text frames, graphic layout elements like dim background, border art, footer symbols, etc. Widely available on the web, and also from Adobe, are the document templates, with pre-defined styles and useful text-formatting definitions. All of those work like macros. Once specified, they can be applied instantaneously to any selection or all documents at once via the book window. Importing select definitions is a snap, so that you have infinite possibilities of formatting, while preserving the benefits of automation.

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ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY

Yes, but not in Frame. Whatever you needed to do by hand in popular programs, you can automate in FrameMaker - an enormous advantage of this program. Whether you need to apply specific changes like text layout, text-flow, sidebars, or various paragraph formats, it's a matter of a single click, IRRESPECTIVE of the length of the document, its degree of complexity, and the number of chapters in a book. Popular programs give you only some control over the text and are helpless with layout or complex documents of substantial length. If you need to work on a textbook or a highly technical scientific document of any length, Frame applies all changes in a split-second - a real eye-opener for those who thus far lived in the World of Word.

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OBJECTS

Frame places all objects in frames, and allows a full customization of frames, their layout, graphic resolution, etc. This is handy for all graphics, including bullets in numbered lists, and any anchored objects that appear in sidebars. From experience I can vouch for the easiness with which FrameMaker handles these usually cumbersome tasks. In other applications, equations are treated as objects, and should you need to change a setting, you need to do changes by hand for every object. Imagine the degree of workload for a 1000-page document full of math! Frame applies changes in a second, since it treats equations as text. This feature is the sole reason why technical writers should stop using other popular programs and switch to Frame immediately.

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CROSS-REFERENCES, INDEX, TABLES OF CONTENTS

FrameMaker handles cross-references like a dream. So often we need to use footnotes, endnotes, references, definitions, not to mention a good index or table of contents. There is nothing wimpy in Frame in this respect. Updating cross-references, working with them - is very easy, once you learn how to use context-specific menu. Then, all changes are updated automatically, and your index shall be admirable, and will not take days of erroneous manual wading through a document. That is the sole reason for Frame to be the primary choice for textbooks and technical documents. The capabilities and scope of configuration options might give you a headache of bliss.

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EXPORTING

The package contains also built-in utilities for exporting the mother format into portable web documents, and a separate utility, Webworks Publisher Standard that allows you to transform the Frame documents into web-wide languages of HTML, DHTML and XML. Obviously, Frame supports PDF - you can export your complicated book into PDF with all structure preserved. Adobe Distiller is on the program CD, so that you can "print" your document, or set of documents - into this virtual printer and generate an Adobe PDF. In consequence, you do not really need a full version Adobe Acrobat. Many dynamic user-active web documents were created in Frame, and converted by Webworks utility with XML specification.

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PRICE AND COMPETITION

Yes, it does cost two or three times the competitive products. Once you overcome the learning curve, not only you will have easy time with all documents you will need to work with in your life, irrespective of their length or complexity, but you will also create documents of excellent quality, which are cross-platform-compatible, and which are more than acceptable for commercial printing. In fact, if you work closely with your publisher, they will either demand a Frame-generated postscript, or a Tex file. They are very similar products, but Frame is much more user friendly, since the latter is essentially a programming language. Frame has its mouse-clicker advantages, and thanks Adobe for that. The world of high-end publishing is finally available for everyone.

Rating:
Summary: The standard for professional desktop bookmaking
Review: Adobe Framemaker is the industry standard for professional desktop bookmaking. Widely used by technical writers in the computer industry, Framemaker is the only desktop publishing software that can handle the production and publication of 1,000+ page books. (MS Word usually falls apart at around 300 pages.) Framemaker has fully enabled style mark-up, indexing, and cross-referencing features, as well as being the only word processing package on the market _designed_ to be coupled with Adobe Acrobat to create active, fully cross-linked PDFs.

No professional writer should be without it.

Rating:
Summary: High-End Publishing Tool
Review: Framemaker is an excellent product that offers all sorts of advanced features. For example, it is simple to produce and print out a double-sided document with a universally applied page format. However, the instruction manual is the worse example of documentation that I have ever experienced. After completing production of a book (several files amalgamated into one group that may be worked on as an entity)it is reasonable to assume the next step will be to generate a list of contents. You will have to work it out for yourself as the section dealing with this topic is gobbly- gook, disjointed,full of unexplained terminology and frankly not understandable. Take my advice, if you are not good at working things out for yourself, the instruction manual is a very good reason why you should choose another product

Rating:
Summary: Framemaker, excellent but....
Review: Framemaker is an excellent product that offers all sorts of advanced features. For example, it is simple to produce and print out a double-sided document with a universally applied page format. However, the instruction manual is the worse example of documentation that I have ever experienced. After completing production of a book (several files amalgamated into one group that may be worked on as an entity)it is reasonable to assume the next step will be to generate a list of contents. You will have to work it out for yourself as the section dealing with this topic is gobbly- gook, disjointed,full of unexplained terminology and frankly not understandable. Take my advice, if you are not good at working things out for yourself, the instruction manual is a very good reason why you should choose another product

Rating:
Summary: Essential For Book Publishing!
Review: This is a fantastic product for book publishing. As a relative novice to book typesetting and interior design, I bought Framemaker 6.0 as my only chance to produce a book worthy of any major publishing house. A sincere thank you to Adobe's team of software specialists in designing a product, which truly worked for all our stringent page layout and publishing requirements! The manual is rather daunting at first, but I got my bearings by just reading through all of it from cover to cover before actually using the program itself. It could be somewhat more geared to the beginner user with clearer examples and an explanation of the publishing terminology, however, once you have mastered the rudiments, it is in general a user-friendly program. It took me about one month of concentrated effort to get into the program basics by focusing solely on our specific publishing needs. It more than proved its worth at our publishing house. We were able to import and convert chapters from MS Word to Framemaker 6.0 format, construct master pages with page numbering and running heads, align the text and lines on each page within each chapter, then build our own "Book Window" with all the chapters in sequence. Once in this "Book Window", you can adjust all the page numbering throughout the book, do bookwide editing, including search/replace etc. Unlike Pagemaker, this program is geared to larger tomes. Our book has 23 chapters and is 255 pages long and we had no difficulty. What was truly marvelous was the seamless interface between Framemaker 6.0 and Illustrator 9.0. To make our book special, we were able to design our own decoration for the chapter initials at the beginning of each chapter, the dividers within the book pages and the decoration in the running heads, all in Illustrator 9.0 and then import these right into the Framemaker 6.0 book pages. It was marvelous to be able to do so and then easily adjust the "sizing, runaround and gap" about the image to fit it onto the page. And even more, we were able to import other grayscale images, e.g. onto the chapter page and at the end of the book for advertising one of our already published books! By the way, we were not able to import objects drawn with shadows in Illustrator and transfered into Framemaker, but in our case it did not matter all that much. Also we found the conversion of the entire book in "Book Window" to Adobe's PDF for final printing very easy too. Overall, this program truly allowed us to make a book come to life! If you'd like to see our finished results and what can be done with Adobe's programs (both Illustrator 9.0 and Framemaker 6.0 were used for all the artwork/design and no clipart!), our book is entitled, "Accused By Facet-Eyes, A Classic Science-Fiction Novel" (by C.B. Don). In conclusion, I am very happy with Framemaker 6.0 and I would highly recommend it for any book publishing projects.