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Earlier today, I asked if anyone had definitive information on the
development status of PageMaker (now that Adobe's focus seems to be on
promoting InDesign and on the upcoming Frame release). Judging from the
responses, it appears that there's an enormous amount of rumor and
speculation out there, in large part because Adobe doesn't seem to have done
a particularly good job of sending out a coherent message either to its own
staff or to the users of PageMaker.
Nonetheless, David Ibbetson (thanks, David!) reports the clearest data I've
yet received: that Adobe representatives on the PageMaker and InDesign
discussion groups have confirmed that the product is still in development,
and that a new release is scheduled (tentatively, as with all things related
to software) this year. Given the confusion that exists, I would consider
this information reliable but not definitive until I actually see the
product announcement from Adobe. But given the huge installed base of
PageMaker users, and Adobe's reluctance to abandon this segment of the
publishing market to Microsoft Publisher, it's hard to see how they could
completely abandon PageMaker without alienating many, many customers.
