Adobe FrameMaker
Encyclopedia
Adobe FrameMaker is a document processor
for the production and manipulation of large structured document
s. It is produced by Adobe Systems
. Although FrameMaker has evolved slowly in recent years, it maintains a strong following among professional technical writer
s.
and WebDAV
, but at heart it is a proprietary single-desktop-oriented system based on a binary file format. While problems exist in FrameMaker's XML implementation, the application supports authoring in an XML-based workflow.
FrameMaker became an Adobe product in 1995 when Adobe purchased Frame Technology Corp. Adobe added SGML support, which eventually morphed into today's XML support. In April 2004, Adobe ceased support of FrameMaker for the Macintosh.
This reinvigorated rumors surfacing in 2001 that product development and support for FrameMaker were being wound down. Adobe denied these rumors in 2001, later releasing Framemaker 8 at the end of July 2007.
FrameMaker has two ways of approaching documents: structured
and unstructured.
If the user opens a structured file in the unstructured FrameMaker, the structure will be lost.
at Columbia University
, Charles "Nick" Corfield
, a mathematician alumnus of the University of Cambridge
, decided to write a WYSIWYG
document editor
on a Sun-2
workstation
. He got the idea from his college roommate at Columbia, Ben Meiry, who went to work at Sun Microsystems
as a technical consultant and writer, and saw that there was a market for a powerful and flexible desktop publishing
(DTP) product for the professional market.
The only substantial DTP product at the time of FrameMaker's conception was Interleaf
, which also ran on Sun workstations. Meiry saw an opportunity for a product to compete with Interleaf, enlisted Corfield to program it, and assisted him in acquiring the hardware, software, and technical connections to get him going in his Columbia University dorm room (where Corfield was still finishing his degree).
Corfield programmed his algorithms quickly. After only a few months, Corfield had completed a functional prototype of FrameMaker. The prototype caught the eyes of salesmen at the fledgling Sun Microsystems, which lacked commercial applications to showcase the graphics capabilities of their workstations. They got permission from Corfield to use the prototype as demoware for their computers, and hence, the primitive FrameMaker received plenty of exposure in the Unix
workstation arena.
Steve Kirsch
saw the demo and realized the potential of the product. Kirsch used the money he earned from Mouse Systems
to fund a startup company, Frame Technology Corp., to commercialize the software.
Corfield chose to sue Meiry for release of rights to the software in order to more easily obtain additional investment capital with Kirsch. Meiry had little means to fight a lengthy and expensive lawsuit with Corfield and his new business partners, and he chose to release his rights to FrameMaker and move on.
Originally written for SunOS
(a variant of UNIX) on Sun machines, FrameMaker was a popular technical writing tool, and the company was profitable early on. Due to the flourishing desktop publishing market on the Apple Macintosh, the software was ported to the Mac as its second platform.
In the early 1990s, a wave of UNIX workstation vendors—Sony
, Motorola
, Data General
, MIPS, and Apollo
—provided funding to Frame Technology for an OEM
version for their platforms.
At the height of its success, FrameMaker ran on more than thirteen UNIX platforms, including NeXT Computer
's NeXTSTEP
and IBM
's AIX
operating systems. The NeXT and AIX version of FrameMaker used Display PostScript
technology, whereas all other UNIX versions used the X Window System
-Motif
windowing environment.
Sun Microsystems and AT&T
were promoting the OPEN LOOK
GUI
standard to win over Motif, so Sun contracted Frame Technology to implement a version of FrameMaker on their PostScript
-based NeWS
windowing system. The NeWS version of FrameMaker was successfully released to those customers adopting the OPEN LOOK standards.
At this point, FrameMaker was considered an extraordinary product for its day, enabling authors to produce highly structured documents with relative ease, but also giving users a great deal of typographical control in a reasonably intuitive and totally WYSIWYG way. The output documents could be of very high typographical quality.
Frame Technology later ported FrameMaker to Microsoft Windows
, but the company lost direction soon after its release. Up to this point, FrameMaker had been targeting a professional market for highly technical publications, such as the maintenance manuals for the Boeing 777
project, and licensed each copy for $2,500. But the Windows version brought the product to the $500 price range, which cannibalized its own non-Windows customer base.
The company's attempt to sell sophisticated technical publishing software to the home DTP
market was a disaster. A tool designed for a 1000-page manual was too cumbersome and difficult for an average home user to type a one-page letter. And despite some initially enthusiastic users, FrameMaker never really took off in the academic market, because of the company's unwillingness to incorporate various functions (such as support of endnotes or of long footnotes split across pages), or to improve the equation editor.
Sales plummeted and brought the company to the verge of bankruptcy
. After several rounds of layoffs, the company was stripped to the bare bones.
Adobe Systems acquired the product and returned the focus to the professional market. Today, Adobe FrameMaker is still a widely-used publication tool for technical writer
s, although no version has been released for the Mac OS X
operating system, limiting use of the product (FrameMaker up to version 7.0 ran under Mac OS 9, and is usable under Mac OS X, through version 10.4.11 "Tiger", on PowerPC-based Macs in the Classic emulation environment
, but there is no Mac OS X native version of FrameMaker). Note that latest versions of Mac OS X, v10.5 "Leopard" and newer, eliminated Classic support, even for PowerPC-based Macs. Therefore, if running Mac OS X 10.5.x, it is now impossible to run any Mac version of FrameMaker using Apple-supplied software. An alternative is SheepShaver
, a GPL-licensed, open source MacOS Classic run-time environment available for both PowerPC and Intel Macs.
FrameMaker versions 5.x through 7.2 (from mid-1995 to 2005) did not contain updates to major parts of the program (including its general user interface, table editing, and illustration editing), concentrating instead on bug fixes and the integration of XML-oriented features (previously part of the FrameMaker+SGML premium product). FrameMaker did not feature multiple undo until version 7.2 (its 2005 release).
FrameMaker 8 (2007) introduced Unicode
, Flash
, 3D
, and built-in DITA
support. Platform support was Windows (2000, XP, and Vista) and Sun Solaris (8, 9, and 10).
FrameMaker 9 (2009) introduced a redesigned user interface and several enhancements, including: full support for DITA
, support for more media types, better PDF output, and enhanced WebDAV-based CMS
integration. Platform support for Sun Solaris and Windows 2000 was dropped, leaving Windows XP and Windows Vista as the sole remaining platforms.
FrameMaker 10 (2011) again refined the user interface and introduced several changes, including: integration with content management systems via EMC Documentum 6.5 with Service Pack 1 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 with Service Pack 2.
, and Corel Ventura
. Many academic users now use LaTeX
because modern editors have made that system increasingly user-friendly. Another alternative is Scribus
, a desktop publishing
(DTP) application that is released under the GNU General Public License. Several formats, including DocBook
XML, target authors of technical documents about computer hardware and software. Lastly, alternatives to FrameMaker for technical writing include Help authoring tool
s and XML editor
s.
)
FrameMaker 2.0 and 2.1 : Released in 1989 (Mac version released in 1990). 2.1 was running on OSF/Motif. First version to include the Paragraph Designer, Character Designer, Cross Reference capability, and the equation editor (same version that ships with FrameMaker today). First version to support book level generated lists.
FrameMaker 3.0 : Released in 1991. First Windows version available in 1992. FrameMaker 3 introduced table support, hypertext support, and improved book support. In 1992 Sun introduced FrameBuilder (FrameMaker with SGML support).
FrameMaker 4.0 : Released in 1993. FrameMaker 4 introduced Change Bars, Side Head support, run in headers and improved on the Table Designer.
FrameMaker 5.0, 5.1, 5.1.2 : Version 5.1 was released in 1995, and 5.1.2 in 1996. FrameMaker 5 introduced online help, long filename support in Windows 95, OLE support, Save to HTML, and import text by reference. This major version also introduced FrameMaker and FrameMaker+SGML (to replace FrameBuilder).
FrameMaker 5.5/5.5.6 : Released in 1997 (FrameMaker 5.5.6 was released in 1998) FrameMaker 5.5 introduced drag and drop dialogs, first Japanese localized version with doublebyte support, PDFMark support (PDFMark embeds bookmarks, links, and cross-references into PDF
files automatically), color libraries (DIC, Focaltone, Munsell, Pantone, Toyo and Trumatch), language is embedded into Paragraph Designer and Character Designer, and Table designer now supports sorting by row or column. FrameMaker 5.5.6 beta was also the only version to run on Linux, however there was never a final version released due to poor feedback from potential customers. It was also the last version available for IRIX
.
FrameMaker 6.0 : Released in 2000. FrameMaker 6.0 introduced completely rewritten userguide, book wide find/replace and spell check, introduced new and improved chapter/book numbering system, compare document tool and bundled Quadralay WebWorks Publisher.
FrameMaker 7.0 : Released in 2002. FrameMaker 7.0 introduced combined SGML and unstructured version, XML application support introduced, Save As PDF fixed, tagged PDF support, improved running header/footer support, document info stored in XMP format. FrameMaker 7.0 was the last version to run on the Macintosh (OS 8/9), HP/UX and IBM AIX.
FrameMaker 7.1 : Released in 2003. FrameMaker 7.1 was bundled with Distiller 6, and included more OpenType fonts and can import Quark and Pagemaker documents. FrameMaker 7.1 on Unix now uses PDFLib and no longer relies on Distiller. FrameMaker 7.1 is only released on Windows and Solaris.
FrameMaker 7.2 : Released in 2005. FrameMaker 7.2 introduced multiple undo, and included an unsupported DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture
) application pack. It is bundled with WebWorks 8, and Distiller 7 (Unix version uses PDFLib). In 2006 Adobe released officially supported Framemaker 7.2 application packs for DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture
) and S1000D
.
FrameMaker 8 : Released in 2007. FrameMaker 8 introduced Unicode
, Flash
, 3D
and built-in DITA
support. A patch (8.0.1) was released during November, 2007 to fix a number of bugs and errors.
FrameMaker 9 : Released in January, 2009. FrameMaker 9 contains a brand-new user interface and several productivity enhancements. The top new features include: full support for DITA
, rich media incorporation, pristine PDF, importing comments from PDF, Asian language support and enhanced WebDAV based CMS
integration through native HTTP
path support.
FrameMaker 10 : Released in January, 2011. FrameMaker 10 included changes such as: DITA 1.2 support, DITA usability enhancements, author XML content, content management system support,scripting, automatically checking spelling, finding and changing overrides, using the table catalog, repeating the last operation, setting a poster: In videos, drag and drop editing, creating read/write rules, configuring the maker.ini file, text drag and drop, background colour and suppressing alerts.
Document processor
A document processor is a document preparation system that superficially resembles a word processor. However, the emphasis in a document processor is on the arrangement of the document's components, not the formatting of the characters that compose it...
for the production and manipulation of large structured document
Structured document
A structured document is an electronic document where some method of embedded coding, such as markup, is used to give the whole, and parts, of the document various structural meanings according to a schema...
s. It is produced by Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
. Although FrameMaker has evolved slowly in recent years, it maintains a strong following among professional technical writer
Technical writer
A technical writer is a professional writer who designs, creates, and maintains technical documentation...
s.
Overview
FrameMaker has more or less kept up with the times in supporting new standards such as XMLXML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
and WebDAV
WebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
, but at heart it is a proprietary single-desktop-oriented system based on a binary file format. While problems exist in FrameMaker's XML implementation, the application supports authoring in an XML-based workflow.
FrameMaker became an Adobe product in 1995 when Adobe purchased Frame Technology Corp. Adobe added SGML support, which eventually morphed into today's XML support. In April 2004, Adobe ceased support of FrameMaker for the Macintosh.
This reinvigorated rumors surfacing in 2001 that product development and support for FrameMaker were being wound down. Adobe denied these rumors in 2001, later releasing Framemaker 8 at the end of July 2007.
FrameMaker has two ways of approaching documents: structured
Structured writing
Structured writing is a form of technical writing that uses and creates structured documents.The term was coined by Robert E. Horn and became a central part of his Information Mapping method of analyzing, organizing, and displaying knowledge in print and in the new online presentation of text and...
and unstructured.
- Structured FrameMaker is used to achieve consistency in documentation within industries such as aerospace, where several models of the same complex product exist, or pharmaceuticals, where translation and standardization are important requirements in communications about products. Structured FrameMaker uses SGML and XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
concepts. The author works with an EDD (Element Definition Document), which is a FrameMaker-specific DTD (Document Type DefinitionDocument Type DefinitionDocument Type Definition is a set of markup declarations that define a document type for SGML-family markup languages...
). The EDD defines the structure of a document where meaningful units are designated as elements nested in each other depending on their relationships, and where the formatting of these elements is based on their contexts. Attributes or MetadataMetadataThe term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
can be added to these elements and used for single source publishingSingle source publishingSingle source publishing, also known as single sourcing, allows the same content to be used in different documents or in various formats. The labour-intensive and expensive work of editing need only be carried out once, on one document. Further transformations are carried out mechanistically, by...
or for filtering elements during the output processes (such as publishing for print or for web-based display). The author can view the conditions and contexts in a tree-like structure derived from the grammarContext-free grammarIn formal language theory, a context-free grammar is a formal grammar in which every production rule is of the formwhere V is a single nonterminal symbol, and w is a string of terminals and/or nonterminals ....
(as specified by the DTD) or as formatted in a typical final output form.
- Unstructured FrameMaker uses tagged paragraphs without any imposed logical structure, except that expressed by the author’s concept, topic organization, and the formatting supplied by paragraph tags.
If the user opens a structured file in the unstructured FrameMaker, the structure will be lost.
History
While working on his master's degree in astrophysicsAstrophysics
Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Charles "Nick" Corfield
Charles Corfield
Charles "Nick" Corfield is a mathematician, computer programmer, and founder of several startup companies in Silicon Valley, most notably Frame Technology Corp. in 1986, which was acquired by Adobe Systems in 1995. While at Columbia University, Charles wrote the original version of the desktop...
, a mathematician alumnus of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, decided to write a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
document editor
Document processor
A document processor is a document preparation system that superficially resembles a word processor. However, the emphasis in a document processor is on the arrangement of the document's components, not the formatting of the characters that compose it...
on a Sun-2
Sun-2
The Sun-2 series of UNIX workstations and servers was launched by Sun Microsystems in November 1983. As the name suggests, the Sun-2 represented the second generation of Sun systems, superseding the original Sun-1 series...
workstation
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
. He got the idea from his college roommate at Columbia, Ben Meiry, who went to work at Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
as a technical consultant and writer, and saw that there was a market for a powerful and flexible desktop publishing
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
(DTP) product for the professional market.
The only substantial DTP product at the time of FrameMaker's conception was Interleaf
Interleaf
Founded in 1981, Interleaf was a company that created software products for the technical publishing creation and distribution process. Its initial product was the first commercial document processor that integrated text and graphics editing, producing WYSIWYG output at near-typeset quality...
, which also ran on Sun workstations. Meiry saw an opportunity for a product to compete with Interleaf, enlisted Corfield to program it, and assisted him in acquiring the hardware, software, and technical connections to get him going in his Columbia University dorm room (where Corfield was still finishing his degree).
Corfield programmed his algorithms quickly. After only a few months, Corfield had completed a functional prototype of FrameMaker. The prototype caught the eyes of salesmen at the fledgling Sun Microsystems, which lacked commercial applications to showcase the graphics capabilities of their workstations. They got permission from Corfield to use the prototype as demoware for their computers, and hence, the primitive FrameMaker received plenty of exposure in the Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
workstation arena.
Steve Kirsch
Steve Kirsch
Steven Todd Kirsch is an American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID. He invented and owns a patent on an early version of the optical mouse. After bringing multiple successful startup companies through IPO and...
saw the demo and realized the potential of the product. Kirsch used the money he earned from Mouse Systems
Mouse Systems
Mouse Systems Corporation, formerly Rodent Associates, was founded in 1982 by Steve Kirsch, inventor of the optical mouse. In addition to being a vehicle for Kirsch's invention, the company was responsible for bringing the mouse to the IBM PC for the first time.Like all early optical mice, their...
to fund a startup company, Frame Technology Corp., to commercialize the software.
Corfield chose to sue Meiry for release of rights to the software in order to more easily obtain additional investment capital with Kirsch. Meiry had little means to fight a lengthy and expensive lawsuit with Corfield and his new business partners, and he chose to release his rights to FrameMaker and move on.
Originally written for SunOS
SunOS
SunOS is a version of the Unix operating system developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstation and server computer systems. The SunOS name is usually only used to refer to versions 1.0 to 4.1.4 of SunOS...
(a variant of UNIX) on Sun machines, FrameMaker was a popular technical writing tool, and the company was profitable early on. Due to the flourishing desktop publishing market on the Apple Macintosh, the software was ported to the Mac as its second platform.
In the early 1990s, a wave of UNIX workstation vendors—Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, Data General
Data General
Data General was one of the first minicomputer firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation. Their first product, the Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer...
, MIPS, and Apollo
Apollo Computer
Apollo Computer, Inc., founded 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts by William Poduska and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo was one of the first vendors of graphical workstations in the 1980s...
—provided funding to Frame Technology for an OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
version for their platforms.
At the height of its success, FrameMaker ran on more than thirteen UNIX platforms, including NeXT Computer
NeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
's NeXTSTEP
NEXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
and IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
's AIX
AIX operating system
AIX AIX AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced "a i ex" is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms...
operating systems. The NeXT and AIX version of FrameMaker used Display PostScript
Display PostScript
Display PostScript is an on-screen display system. As the name implies, DPS uses the PostScript imaging model and language to generate on-screen graphics...
technology, whereas all other UNIX versions used the X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
-Motif
Motif (widget toolkit)
In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...
windowing environment.
Sun Microsystems and AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
were promoting the OPEN LOOK
OPEN LOOK
OPEN LOOK is a graphical user interface specification for UNIX workstations. It was originally defined in the late 1980s by Sun Microsystems and AT&T.-History:...
GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
standard to win over Motif, so Sun contracted Frame Technology to implement a version of FrameMaker on their PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
-based NeWS
NeWS
NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S. H. Rosenthal...
windowing system. The NeWS version of FrameMaker was successfully released to those customers adopting the OPEN LOOK standards.
At this point, FrameMaker was considered an extraordinary product for its day, enabling authors to produce highly structured documents with relative ease, but also giving users a great deal of typographical control in a reasonably intuitive and totally WYSIWYG way. The output documents could be of very high typographical quality.
Frame Technology later ported FrameMaker to Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, but the company lost direction soon after its release. Up to this point, FrameMaker had been targeting a professional market for highly technical publications, such as the maintenance manuals for the Boeing 777
Boeing 777
The Boeing 777 is a long-range, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. It is the world's largest twinjet and is commonly referred to as the "Triple Seven". The aircraft has seating for over 300 passengers and has a range from , depending on model...
project, and licensed each copy for $2,500. But the Windows version brought the product to the $500 price range, which cannibalized its own non-Windows customer base.
The company's attempt to sell sophisticated technical publishing software to the home DTP
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
market was a disaster. A tool designed for a 1000-page manual was too cumbersome and difficult for an average home user to type a one-page letter. And despite some initially enthusiastic users, FrameMaker never really took off in the academic market, because of the company's unwillingness to incorporate various functions (such as support of endnotes or of long footnotes split across pages), or to improve the equation editor.
Sales plummeted and brought the company to the verge of bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
. After several rounds of layoffs, the company was stripped to the bare bones.
Adobe Systems acquired the product and returned the focus to the professional market. Today, Adobe FrameMaker is still a widely-used publication tool for technical writer
Technical writer
A technical writer is a professional writer who designs, creates, and maintains technical documentation...
s, although no version has been released for the Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
operating system, limiting use of the product (FrameMaker up to version 7.0 ran under Mac OS 9, and is usable under Mac OS X, through version 10.4.11 "Tiger", on PowerPC-based Macs in the Classic emulation environment
Classic (Mac OS X)
Classic, or Classic Environment, was a hardware and software abstraction layer in Mac OS X that allowed applications compatible with Mac OS 9 to run on the Mac OS X operating system...
, but there is no Mac OS X native version of FrameMaker). Note that latest versions of Mac OS X, v10.5 "Leopard" and newer, eliminated Classic support, even for PowerPC-based Macs. Therefore, if running Mac OS X 10.5.x, it is now impossible to run any Mac version of FrameMaker using Apple-supplied software. An alternative is SheepShaver
SheepShaver
SheepShaver is an open source PowerPC Apple Macintosh emulator originally designed for BeOS and Linux. The name is a play on ShapeShifter, a Macintosh II emulator for AmigaOS , which is in turn not to be confused with a third-party preference pane for Mac OS X with the same name...
, a GPL-licensed, open source MacOS Classic run-time environment available for both PowerPC and Intel Macs.
FrameMaker versions 5.x through 7.2 (from mid-1995 to 2005) did not contain updates to major parts of the program (including its general user interface, table editing, and illustration editing), concentrating instead on bug fixes and the integration of XML-oriented features (previously part of the FrameMaker+SGML premium product). FrameMaker did not feature multiple undo until version 7.2 (its 2005 release).
FrameMaker 8 (2007) introduced Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
, and built-in DITA
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
support. Platform support was Windows (2000, XP, and Vista) and Sun Solaris (8, 9, and 10).
FrameMaker 9 (2009) introduced a redesigned user interface and several enhancements, including: full support for DITA
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
, support for more media types, better PDF output, and enhanced WebDAV-based CMS
Content management system
A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
integration. Platform support for Sun Solaris and Windows 2000 was dropped, leaving Windows XP and Windows Vista as the sole remaining platforms.
FrameMaker 10 (2011) again refined the user interface and introduced several changes, including: integration with content management systems via EMC Documentum 6.5 with Service Pack 1 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 with Service Pack 2.
Alternatives and competition
There were several major competitors in the technical publishing market, such as Arbortext, InterleafInterleaf
Founded in 1981, Interleaf was a company that created software products for the technical publishing creation and distribution process. Its initial product was the first commercial document processor that integrated text and graphics editing, producing WYSIWYG output at near-typeset quality...
, and Corel Ventura
Corel Ventura
Ventura Publisher was the first popular desktop publishing package for IBM PC compatible computers running the GEM extension to the DOS operating system. The software was originally developed by Ventura Software, a small software company founded by John Meyer, Don Heiskel and Lee Jay Lorenzen, all...
. Many academic users now use LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...
because modern editors have made that system increasingly user-friendly. Another alternative is Scribus
Scribus
Scribus is a desktop publishing application, released under the GNU General Public License as free software. It is based on the free Qt toolkit, therefore native versions are available for Linux, Unix-like operating systems, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2...
, a desktop publishing
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
(DTP) application that is released under the GNU General Public License. Several formats, including DocBook
DocBook
DocBook is a semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software but it can be used for any other sort of documentation....
XML, target authors of technical documents about computer hardware and software. Lastly, alternatives to FrameMaker for technical writing include Help authoring tool
Help authoring tool
A Help Authoring Tool or HAT is a software program used by technical writers to create online help systems.-Functions:The basic functions of Help Authoring Tools can be divided into the following categories:-File input:...
s and XML editor
XML editor
An XML editor is a markup language editor with added functionality to facilitate the editing of XML. This can be done using a plain text editor, with all the code visible, but XML editors have added facilities like tag completion and menus and buttons for tasks that are common in XML editing, based...
s.
Versions
FrameMaker 1.11b : Released in 1986 (Solaris and AEGISDomain/OS
Domain/OS is the operating system used by the Apollo/Domain line of workstations manufactured by Apollo Computer, Inc. during the late 1980s, as the successor to the one previously used, AEGIS. It was one of the early distributed operating systems...
)
FrameMaker 2.0 and 2.1 : Released in 1989 (Mac version released in 1990). 2.1 was running on OSF/Motif. First version to include the Paragraph Designer, Character Designer, Cross Reference capability, and the equation editor (same version that ships with FrameMaker today). First version to support book level generated lists.
FrameMaker 3.0 : Released in 1991. First Windows version available in 1992. FrameMaker 3 introduced table support, hypertext support, and improved book support. In 1992 Sun introduced FrameBuilder (FrameMaker with SGML support).
FrameMaker 4.0 : Released in 1993. FrameMaker 4 introduced Change Bars, Side Head support, run in headers and improved on the Table Designer.
FrameMaker 5.0, 5.1, 5.1.2 : Version 5.1 was released in 1995, and 5.1.2 in 1996. FrameMaker 5 introduced online help, long filename support in Windows 95, OLE support, Save to HTML, and import text by reference. This major version also introduced FrameMaker and FrameMaker+SGML (to replace FrameBuilder).
FrameMaker 5.5/5.5.6 : Released in 1997 (FrameMaker 5.5.6 was released in 1998) FrameMaker 5.5 introduced drag and drop dialogs, first Japanese localized version with doublebyte support, PDFMark support (PDFMark embeds bookmarks, links, and cross-references into PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
files automatically), color libraries (DIC, Focaltone, Munsell, Pantone, Toyo and Trumatch), language is embedded into Paragraph Designer and Character Designer, and Table designer now supports sorting by row or column. FrameMaker 5.5.6 beta was also the only version to run on Linux, however there was never a final version released due to poor feedback from potential customers. It was also the last version available for IRIX
IRIX
IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...
.
FrameMaker 6.0 : Released in 2000. FrameMaker 6.0 introduced completely rewritten userguide, book wide find/replace and spell check, introduced new and improved chapter/book numbering system, compare document tool and bundled Quadralay WebWorks Publisher.
FrameMaker 7.0 : Released in 2002. FrameMaker 7.0 introduced combined SGML and unstructured version, XML application support introduced, Save As PDF fixed, tagged PDF support, improved running header/footer support, document info stored in XMP format. FrameMaker 7.0 was the last version to run on the Macintosh (OS 8/9), HP/UX and IBM AIX.
FrameMaker 7.1 : Released in 2003. FrameMaker 7.1 was bundled with Distiller 6, and included more OpenType fonts and can import Quark and Pagemaker documents. FrameMaker 7.1 on Unix now uses PDFLib and no longer relies on Distiller. FrameMaker 7.1 is only released on Windows and Solaris.
FrameMaker 7.2 : Released in 2005. FrameMaker 7.2 introduced multiple undo, and included an unsupported DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
) application pack. It is bundled with WebWorks 8, and Distiller 7 (Unix version uses PDFLib). In 2006 Adobe released officially supported Framemaker 7.2 application packs for DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
) and S1000D
S1000D
S1000D is an international specification for the procurement and production of technical publications. It is an XML specification for preparing, managing, and using equipment maintenance and operations information. It was initially developed by the for use with military aircraft...
.
FrameMaker 8 : Released in 2007. FrameMaker 8 introduced Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
and built-in DITA
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
support. A patch (8.0.1) was released during November, 2007 to fix a number of bugs and errors.
FrameMaker 9 : Released in January, 2009. FrameMaker 9 contains a brand-new user interface and several productivity enhancements. The top new features include: full support for DITA
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture is an OASIS standard XML data model for authoring and publishing. Many third party tools support authoring, including Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, Arbortext, Quark XML Author, Oxygen XML Editor, easyDITA, and SDL Xopus...
, rich media incorporation, pristine PDF, importing comments from PDF, Asian language support and enhanced WebDAV based CMS
Content management system
A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
integration through native HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
path support.
FrameMaker 10 : Released in January, 2011. FrameMaker 10 included changes such as: DITA 1.2 support, DITA usability enhancements, author XML content, content management system support,scripting, automatically checking spelling, finding and changing overrides, using the table catalog, repeating the last operation, setting a poster: In videos, drag and drop editing, creating read/write rules, configuring the maker.ini file, text drag and drop, background colour and suppressing alerts.
External links
- Adobe FrameMaker Official Page
- History of FrameMaker
- FrameUsers.com FrameMaker users' largest online reference site and community
- FrameMaker Bugs & Issues (MicroType)
- FrameMaker FAQ (MicroType)
- Framemaker and Frame Developer Kit Developer Blog with news about scripting and developing clients for Framemaker
- Element Descriptions in Structured FrameMaker 10 Using Element Descriptions to cut down writers’ training costs and efforts.