At 02:04 +0000 12/8/11, visualbistro at comcast.net wrote: >What are the general thoughts from this "community?" What are the PROs and >CONs? What should I recommend? We are a small startup business (check out ><http://www.agilyx.com>www.agilyx.com), and have to keep an eye on the budget, >but we want to create professional results in everything we do.
As Peter suggested, older version would only be occasionally available from the likes of eBay. However, I went to FrameMaker 7 on Mac via that route and it gave me no problems. At some point I will try to go to v 8 for Windows via the same route, when I upgrade my main Mac to one of the Intel-based models. I have no direct experience of versions after 7, but others have said they prefer FrameMaker 8. v 9 introduced the new Adobe-style palette-based UI, to general derision, but DITA support got better across 8 -> 9 -> 10. Conditional text was improved significantly with one of the version later than 7 to allow the use of Boolean conditions, but I'm not sure whether those came in with v 8 or v 9. If you don't need DITA/structure, consider looking for a second-hand full copy of FrameMaker 8, but see what other opinions you get. -- Steve
