New Cross-References Plug-in for InDesign Ships TechWhack, India - It is a robust solution inspired by a similar feature in Adobe FrameMaker, utilising paragraph and character styles with XML driven format. ... |
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New Cross-References Plug-in for InDesign Ships
TechWhack, India - It is a robust solution inspired by a similar feature in Adobe FrameMaker, utilising paragraph and character styles with XML driven format. … |
16 Aug 07
Framemaker 8.0 vs 7.2 packaging
15 Aug 07
Adobe Technical Support Problems
Seems there’s a groundswell of anger at Adobe over recent tech support policy changes, poor support etc.. Robohelp is the primary target of complaints in the recent diatribes, but frankly, Adobe’s always seemed a bit arrogant as a company and more interested in milking profit from customers than in helping them. (Witness the user-hostile behavior of Acrobat plugins in browsers, the high prices, the limited features in upgrades like Framemaker 8…) From our source:
The web traffic complaining about price increases of Adobe’s products while the perceived quality of service (QoS) in support decreases has been sharply on the rise. Technorati and Google both easily find Adobe users who are simply not happy with the QoS they’re receiving post-purchase. I have close to eight years direct experience working in the Technical Support field, and I will start discussing the Tech Support trends concerning me about how large companies handle user support in the very near future.
Add to this that the former manager of help for Robohelp has just joined MadCap software and you don’t get a pretty picture.
In our continued commitment to providing the very best technical support available in the industry, and in support of our increased customer adoption and growth, we are very pleased to announce that we have recently hired Var Galpchian as a new addition to the MadCap team.
Can this go on forever?
http://www.bluestream.com/products
Since Adobe has not chosen to turn Framemaker into a major-league structured content management solution, we thought we’d feature a few vendors who do this kind of product. This post is about Bluestream, a company that describes itself as follows:
Bluestream Database Software Corp. is the world leader in the XML database and XML content management technology. Bluestream’s flag-ship products XDocs DITA enabled content management system and XStreamDB, native XML database, have been embraced by end users, technology partners, OEM’s, and resellers around the world. Bluestream has been successfully selling it’s products and services since 1997 to customers in many verticals including, military, oil and gas, software, manufacturing, healthcare, financial/banking, content management, and E-Learning.
Bluestream is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Their products include:
- XDocs XML Content Management System
XDocs is an out-of-the box DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) enabled XML content management system ideal for budget conscious organizations that are looking to maximize content reusability and repurposing. Built with non-technical users in mind, XDocs is a standard-compliant single sourcing solution that enables technical communicators to create, manage and store large volumes of both XML and non-XML content. - XStreamDB Native XML Database
XStreamDB 3.2™ is a native XML database server for storage and retrieval of XML documents. Anywhere you find XML you will find XStreamDB, including applications in content management, web publishing and enterprise application integration. It has a transaction-based architecture, support for XQuery with update extensions, XML Schemas, value and full text indexes, resource locking, and WebDAV sharing. It is accessible using a Java API, or the included XStreamDB™ Explorer application for configuration, ad hoc queries, and administration. - StreamStore Embeddable Record Manager
StreamStore is a compact, embeddable database engine for direct Java object storage. It combines high performance data access with the reliability of full transaction support into a simple and natural programmer’s model for storing and retrieving Java objects and streams.
Anyone with experiences with this product, we’d invite impressions or comments.
Framemaker obviously still has some fans who use Macs and would like (or need) a port of their document processing/production tool of choice to the OS/X platform. FM4OSX.org is sponsoring a petition to encourage Adobe to port Frame 8 to the Mac.
The FrameMaker for Mac OS X Petition was created to persuade Adobe to reconsider its decision and develop FrameMaker for Mac OS X. If you feel strongly about Adobe’s decision to discontinue Mac FrameMaker, write to Adobe executives explaining how it affects you and your business, sign the petition, and join the FrameMaker for Mac OS X Mailing List for news and updates. Write to Apple executives as well and ask them to put pressure on Adobe.
Only time will tell whether the 8.0 release of Framemaker is likely to get ported to a Mac. I wouldn’t count on it, though i had doubts about 8.0 showing up at all, so what do I know?