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Let me respond a bit to this point now that I have a little more time.
Remember, please, that I began by assuming there is not an
already-existing competence with Frame and WWP...thus, two fairly
substantial learning curves to climb right there.
Next, with Frame and WWP, a complex solution is often outsourced for
setup to consultants. Remember the post that said that the *manager*
must do a highly conditioned Frame project with many variables and
couldn't even turn it over to writers in her group because of its
complexity?
Do you suppose this is a mark of an "easy" solution? I think not!
Next, for a new product without existing docs, and with the need to do
multiple versions of the product, I submit that even if much of the
initial setup must be outsourced to a consultant, the result will
still be far more flexible for future demands than Frame/WWP.
Your focus seems to be nearly all on the authoring environment. This
is a non-issue today, since more and more XML authoring tools have
gained many of the same sorts of "bells and whistles" as other, older
tools.
I also doubt Adobe's sincerity in maintaining Frame as a viable
product over the typical lifespan of a new product line. In fact,
Bruce Chisen (Adobe CEO) gave an interview just prior to the launch of
Frame 7.0 in which was for a time on the Internet. In it, he stated
that InDesign--with a more modern and modular architecture--would
become the code base for long document handling in future. At the same
time, roughly, many of the Adobe Frame developers were either
reassigned or laid off in California and the support and development
of the product was outsourced (India, IIRC).
To me, these signs appear fairly conclusive that Frame as we know it
today is not much longer for the world. Thus, basing a new and complex
multiple-version product on Frame today seems, at best, to be
ill-advised.
For those with existing Frame document bases, were I to speculate I'd
suggest that the time will come when a transition of some sort becomes
necessary. To that end, I suspect it makes great sense to transition
the existing docs to structured form if they are not already created
that way. Then, a transition to any other viable approach becomes much
more trivial....whether moving the entire thing into a CMS, to an XML
authoring environment, or to another tool (possibly InDesign as its
long-doc and XML capabilities continue to expand).
If you have never done such a document transition from one platform to
another, you will quickly learn that it is by no means a "slam
dunk"--especially with ongoing updates and release schedules to
conform to. This is why I would not suggest *beginning* a new product
line's documentation in Frame today--as much as I like it.
But then, there is in me and I suspect in many others an element of
familiarity that offsets the long time and the frustrations involved
in becoming used to Frame's own quirkiness. But then, the mind also
tends to forget unpleasant things fairly quickly...
Finally, I suggest you study the current state of the art in XML
tools. With each passing month, more user friendly documentation
environments show up...and, as I have said previously * think, one
alternative I would consider is OpenOffice with export to DocBook or
one of its variants...especially with the impending introduction of
2.0 and its various improvements. (I am presently running 1.9.65 at
home--and it is impressive!).
David
On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 18:03:48 -0500, T.W. Smith <techwordsmith -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> I know what you are saying, but I think we disagree.
>
> For an XML-base approach or for a FM+WWP-based approach, the same
> concepts have to be grasped: identifying content and tagging it.
>
> Beyond that, FM+WWP offers a GUI-based environment that's oriented
> towards technical writing with, really, no programming nor database
> management needed.
>
> XML does not offer such a wrapper.
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