Interestingly, Syed's comments mirror my own trajectory but I have been
using LaTeX et al for as long as I have been using FrameMaker.
I doubt I will be moving past version 10 unless my clients continue to
request I upgrade (to match compatibility with their software). I doubt
I will be taking any short term licensing options because files are not
created for short term use.
Importantly for me, TeXLive is free and has a strong and vibrant user base.
Alan
On 29/10/13 7:22 AM, Syed Zaeem Hosain (syed.hos...@aeris.net) wrote:
Hi, Joseph.
You are not the only one who is abandoning FrameMaker … if you look at
my posts in the past months, I have done the same although I have been
using it since 1988 off and on. I am still on the list for old times
sake, though. J
Please do send me your detailed reasons in an off-list e-mail – would
like to know /your/ decision trigger! For me, it was the (a) recent
over-pricing for some version upgrades that should have been done as
free bug fixes, (b) the Adobe trend (albeit not yet announced for
FrameMaker) to SAAS as the only licensing mechanism, and (c) their
abandonment of small users (i.e., number of licenses) from their
multi-year update licensing system.
Today, *all* my new documents are no longer in FrameMaker. I am /only/
using it for maintaining and changing old documents, and if the change
is large enough, I move it off FrameMaker. That takes a couple of days
– even for the large documents – and then I am fine for the future! In
time, all my old documents will be moved from FrameMaker.
However, I have not chosen Flare as my platform, although it looks
quite capable. Switching to it is expensive (of course, if they made
me a $199 one-time offer to switch from FrameMaker to Flare, I would
do it! J)
For now, /for my needs (which may not apply to everybody)/, a
combination of Word 2013 for short documents (less than 10 to 20
pages), and LaTex (for large multi-hundred page specifications) is
proving quite workable. Not perfect, and not as flexible as
FrameMaker, but the costly “upgrades” of FrameMaker is not acceptable,
and the trend to equally costly SAAS is a deal-breaker.
BTW, LaTeX in particular allows me to achieve **complete**
look-and-feel consistency in my specifications – formatting is
separate from text entry – and I value that highly. It was my reason
for selecting FrameMaker over Word about 12 years ago for my current
company.
Regards, and good luck!
Z
*From:*framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] *On Behalf Of *Joseph
Lorenzini
*Sent:* Saturday, October 26, 2013 10:13 AM
*To:* FrameMaker Forum; tcs-us...@googlegroups.com
*Subject:* So Long and Thanks for the Fish -- Migrating from
FrameMaker to Flare
Hi all,
I have used FrameMaker for over 5 years. I have used it to produce
thousands of pages of documentation. And I honestly thought that FM
was a great tool...for a time. Plus, the community was super helpful.
So its with some regret that I am telling you that I am leaving this
community and the TCS suite. I am adopting Flare as a replacement.
Please note I am no evangelist of Flare nor do I think that there's
One Right Tool. FrameMaker can be a great solution for some and if
works for you then great. The reasons why I made this choice were
driven by a specific business and use case
There are many reasons for this but that would cause this post to grow
quite large and I didn't want to flood this community with a gigantic
post about why I am not using its tool anymore.
That said, my experience of why and how i migrated may be of interest
to others in this forum. If you'd like a detailed explanation and are
curious to learn more, I would be happy to share those details with
you offline. Feel free to email me.
Sincerely,
Joseph Lorenzini
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