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Adobe's Warnock speaks on the future of FrameMaker and PageMaker
Subject:Adobe's Warnock speaks on the future of FrameMaker and PageMaker From:"Carl L. Young" <carl -at- DIGIPUBCORP -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 8 Jan 1999 11:13:25 -0700
There's been some speculative discussion lately on both the Techwriter-L and
FrameUser's mailing lists about the futures of FrameMaker and PageMaker.
Most of this discussion has come in advance of the release of Adobe's new
publishing software, which is code-named K2.
John Warnock, co-founder and CEO of Adobe Systems, addressed the Arizona
Software Association on Thursday, Jan. 7, 1999. Since I was there demoing
FrameMaker and PageMaker on behalf of the local Adobe sales team, I was able
to ask John at this public forum to specifically address how K2 will affect
the futures of PageMaker and FrameMaker. He was very clear in stating that
both products will continue to be developed after the release of K2.
In summary, John said that K2 is aimed at the very high-end publishing
market, such as color catalogs, magazines and newspapers. (This is the area
where Quark Xpress rules today.)
John said PageMaker is generally used for creating marketing collateral,
brochures and so, and FrameMaker is used in the technical publishing market.
Adobe sees those markets as separate from the audience that K2 is targeting.
"FrameMaker will continue to be the program for the technical, long-document
publishing market," he said. "K2 will be focused on the high-end, complex
graphics market, such as magazines."
As a follow-up, I asked him to comment on the Interleaf direct mail campaign
that derides FrameMaker as "revision-locked."
"FrameMaker is not revision-locked," he said. "There is a team working on
that (FrameMaker development) right now."
Carl L. Young
DigiPub Solutions Corp.
(602) 788-6512
Adobe FrameMaker, Acrobat, and FrameMaker+SGML sales, training, and
consulting
Check out the Word vs. FrameMaker white paper at www.digipubcorp.com