Why did you go from Framemaker to XMetal?

[Verner]

Hi
I have been a Framemaker user for approximately 17 years. Now we are planning to go structured. I have heard of so many companies abandoning Framemaker and selecting XMetal.

What were the most important driving factors behind you decision? If we choose XMetal is there any way that we could make the transition easier?

Best regards,

Verner

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[joco23]

Hey, I was also wondering the same thing so I found this on the web:

We are migrating to XMetal DITA from RoboHelp and Frame/webworks. We
like that XMetal is in one package and we don't have to worry about
maintaining multiple applications to output our deliverables (chm,
single html, and pdf). Granted the PDF output has been difficult to
achieve, but we have a Tools person who has been able to customize
output to meet our needs.

Source: http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers/2009-July/017679.html

[link spam removed by forum admin]

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[ghkrause]

There is no “you must change the horse” when you enter the structured authoring camp. My team and I used XML based Framemaker for some years with lots of conditional text, text insets and SVG graphics. To cut the long story short:
– FM is a DTP program and authors spend quite some time on formatting and fine tuning of output (PDF in our case). If you are interested in automated and uniform formatting the rendition process must be on a server out of range of standard authors.
– Modular writing with files containing less than a page are irritating with page oriented editors.
– Framemaker is no XML editor, it is an XML import/export program that allows editing in between – even no-edits may change the file significantly.
– I decided to go for DITA and the tool change went along with the paradigm change.
Framemaker can be used as PDF renderer, the formatting was already done and no XSL-FO was necessary (ok, some lines of XSLT to go from merged DITA to our homegrown DTD).
Of course, I left out all arguments to switch to modular and XML based authoring.

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