I've seen this before. The sales staff at PTC (parent company of
Arbortext) are _very_ good. They reach exactly the right people, at the
right level in the organization, to make the sale. They are likely
selling Arbortext as a companion to PTC's other enterprise product data
management products (namely, Windchill). Writers are typically not
involved in the enterprise sale.
I've seen organizations create and deliver effective documentation with
any number of tools, including Arbortext. For certain applications
(writing to MIL-Specs, for example), Arbortext will be substantially
easier out-of-the box than FrameMaker.
Migrating structured FrameMaker content will be a big challenge.
Customer-specific EDDs and templates will be problematic. Although, in
fairness, Arbortext's formatting tools are far better than when FOSI
knowledge was a requirement. And it's probably a Good Thing from an
efficiency perspective to minimize or avoid customer-specific
customizations.
This only tangentially addresses your questions, but I wanted to provide
some perspective about your situation.
-Alan
On 11/19/18 7:33 PM, ROSS, Chris wrote:
My company is thinking of changing from Framemaker to Arbortext. I have been
asked to attend a meeting, consisting mainly of managers and accountants, to
represent the Tech writing population.
I have never used Arbortext before and am finding it very difficult to download
a trial version to make any viable comparison. I would appreciate any input
from other writers who have used Arbortext.
Currently:
* We use Frame for all our technical documentation and deliver usually
as PDF.
* Use structured Framemaker 17.
* Have EDDs and templates for each customer which can be modified if
required.
* Use defence standards.
* We use Sharepoint for our configuration management but have to either
Zip the frame files or PDF them to put them in Sharepoint.
* All graphics are referenced and are in JPEG, TIFF, WMF or PNG.
* Conditional text is often used.
The main questions I have are:
* Is Arbortex easy to use and intuitive?
* Can Frame documents be imported into Arbortex easily and work?
* How easy is it to create templates/EDDs (equivalent) in Arbortext and
modify them?
* Can conditional text (or equivalent) be used in Arbortex?
* Can JPEGs, TIFFs etc. be imported into Arbortex?
* Are Arbortex and Sharepoint compatible?
* Anything that Frame can do that Arbortex wont?
I am very happy using Frame and would like any valid reason for not changing
over.
Thank you.
Chris Ross
Senior Technical Writer
Sustainment and Engineering Solutions
BAE Systems Australia
<snip>
--
Alan Houser
Group Wellesley, Inc.
Consultant and Trainer, Technical Publishing
arh on Twitter
412-450-0532
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