Hello Framers It has been interesting and entertaining to read the various posts about upgrades and pricing. Thanks to Syed for persisting with this. A few statements that have been made raised my eyebrows somewhat:
"Three releases of FrameMaker in 18 months" - really? I must have missed two of them. FM 11.0.1 and 11.0.2 were "critical" bug fixes, meaning that QA had somehow missed testing minor things like publishing a book. I'm unaware of a FM 11.1 or 11.2, and so is the Adobe website. "I just keep smiling when I use the new FM12 UI". This in a supposedly unbiased review. Woohoo, coloured icons. Reminds me of a Windex ad. Enough said. But to be serious for a moment: All the complaints about prices, pricing models, low-value releases, poor documentation, etc. constitute a very cogent argument for structured authoring and XML, with its independence of proprietary tools. These are the very evils that the XML community have been inveighing against for years now - the old "evil empire" comments that used to be made about M$ and other software vendors. It seems to me that any Framers who are not yet using structured authoring and XML, and/or are not convinced about its benefits, should do some serious thinking about where the future lies. Even Adobe has figured this out. Speaking personally, I think the only real argument for continuing to use FrameMaker is its so-far peerless PDF generation capability. For that you don't need to upgrade at all. And as soon as a cheap or open-source alternative appears, that argument becomes irrelavant. Roger Shuttleworth (now) Wirral, UK On 22/01/2014 7:43 PM, Syed Zaeem Hosain (Syed.Hosain at aeris.net) wrote: >> Also, at $400, I doubt if FrameMaker XML Author is going to be able to >> compete with other XML editors out there. The idea is fantastic, but the >> cost needs to be around $100-150 a seat. > > A list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_XML_editors. Many licensed > and free versions listed there. > > I use Altova's XMLSpy Enterprise (for XML and WSDL development work, so it is > not inexpensive), but they also have a simpler XML tool available called > Authentic: http://www.altova.com/authentic.html. > > Authentic is available: (a) free as a Community Edition, with some > limitations, and (b) as an Enterprise version with more features for $59 > including a support and maintenance package price of $14.75 for 1 year, and > $23.60 for 2 years. > > I do not know how well Authentic compares to Oxygen or Adobe XML Author, but > the price is tough to beat - for either the Community or Enterprise versions! > :) > > Z > > _______________________________________________ > > > You are currently subscribed to framers as shuttie27 at gmail.com. > > Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to > framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com > or visit > http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/shuttie27%40gmail.com > > Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit > http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. >
