Adobe Frame Maker Equivalent for Linux? 32
Sim asks: "I currently work for a company which has used Frame Maker on SGI/IRIX systems for almost 10 years (meaning they have roughly 10 years worth of FM documents/reports/technical narratives/etc). It appeared that there would be a clean sweep of old SGI's out the door in favor of PC's running Linux, until a very nasty glitch got in the way: Adobe discontinued it's work on a Linux version of Frame Maker -- leaving the project in a beta format. The unstable format of the current Frame Maker version makes putting it into a production environment nearly impossible. I was hoping someone out there might know of a really powerful Frame Maker substitute."
"This substitute would need to have the following features:
- 'user friendly' GUI
- should be able to handle document management (with document cross refrencing links)
- graphics support
- import tables/create table
- handle multiple template styles (a style manager for creating templates would be wonderful)
- should be able to import/open .DOC formats as well as export/save to .DOC
- STABILITY
Corel Ventura (Score:3, Informative)
StarOffice 6 (Score:2, Interesting)
Even though I'm in a win32 environment, ms word is out of the question for me. I've simply lost too much time recovering images, fixing severe layout issues and working around the many very annoying bugs this word processor has (anyone who has ever tried to keep a figure caption under a figure knows what I'm talking about, it is possible but requires several non trivial measures). I became a framemaker user after word automatically rearranged my master thesis, throwing away all images in the process. That was the last one in a long range of time consuming incidents.
Framemaker doesn't have such inconsistencies. It sure has some strange quirks and severe useability issues but it manages to get the job done reliably. I've worked with it a lot and have learned to work around most of these issues.
I believe star office 6.0 could replace it. Right now it is probably too buggy but it hasn't been released yet. What's important is that it has an open file format (just like framemaker) so it is possible to create conversion tools, it has a reasonably friendly GUI, it is feature rich (including a db for literature references!!)and it's open source (meaning that the more annoying bugs get eliminated by annoyed users).
It's not the ms word killer many believe it to be since that would require much more features and polishing (like it or not, the ms word UI is a pleasure. If only it would work consistently). I'm hoping someone will write coverter for framemaker documents that will preserve a documents structure and crossreferences. Once you have that, the layout can be fixed in a relatively short amount of time so I don't care as much about correct conversion of that.
Re:StarOffice 6 (Score:3, Interesting)
And before people say, no LyX is not an alternative, KWord isn't there by a long shot (although it's heart is in the right place) and StarOffice is too busy trying to be Word for my liking (I haven't tried 6, is it any different other than being in its own window?). $EDITOR isn't in the running for the type of documents you use Frame for.
The important thing is the structured approach to documents with, as you say, consistent formatting and a reasonable, though not great, GUI (Unix frame is better than Windows in this regard, the Windows one is pretty sucky). The Frame feature set is pretty good, or at least provides the types of things technical documents require. And it works, pretty much, reliably and consistently if a little quirky at times.
The approach taken by a lot of the people desiring the Linux version is to get a cheap Sun box and a multilicense install of Solaris Frame running with remote X sessions. The machine only runs Frame so doesn't need to be super fast, give it a bunch of memory and it should be happy.
There's opportunity here. To the comments that said this is another "re-ivent the wheel" it's only because Adobe don't seem to care too much about FrameMaker. The feature set and approach to document formatting suits many types of technical documents far better than typical "word processors". People who do these types of documents and have experienced Frame mostly agree there is no current alternative. But it doesn't get advertised along with their other stuff in the things I see, they try hard to pretend there isn't a version for Unix and some annoying problems have persisted for years. People (like me!) are crying out for a GUI-based, document preparation system for technical documents and others that require reliable formatting, integrate graphics, footnotes, tables, want an index, TOC, LOF, etc... We don't need talking parrots. Just copy Frame and add some biblography support to it :) May be fix some of the other stuff too (reference pages, uggh, process the Frame data structure and you'll realise). Oh, and the types of people who really want a tool
like this pay $$$ for it. We depend on it,
which is why we don't use Word (Word Perfect
sucks too :))
Re:StarOffice 6 (Score:3, Insightful)
In the unix world this niche has been filled by TeX for longer than I can remember. It's not that hard to use, I taught myself in about 3 days.
For windows, http://www.miktex.org/
For Linux, your distro will probably have tetex/latex.
Re:StarOffice 6 (Score:2)
Re:StarOffice 6 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:StarOffice 6 (Score:1)
I've found it to meet all of the requirements you listed. It has excellent TOC/Reference/Figure support, is built with consistent formatting in mind, and is FREE.
I think that maybe what you really need is FrameMaker, because you have used it for so long. However, LaTeX has been around longer IIRC, and has a more than ample featureset. I've used LyX to replace all of my regular word processing needs. I open the occasional Word document in either OpenOffice or Abiword, depending on the complexity of the file. Many others that I know have used it for a thesis, and I myself use it for writing plays, long papers, etc.
Other people at my university do use FrameMaker, using exactly the Solaris hosted trick that you mention, though. It seems to be a matter of preference.
the choice is obvious (Score:1, Funny)
X app on the server (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider XSL:FO (Score:2, Interesting)
Or perhaps the vendor closes its doors. On the other hand, if the company had its source material in XML and used standard presentation languages like XSLT, XSL:FO they wouldn't be tied to any one particular vendor or platform.
XSL:FO can be used to output to a wide variety of formats, including mif, pdf and LaTeX.
I realize this is nearly the same as suggesting it is a good idea to lock the barn door after the fact. But the advantages fo changing to this methodology outweigh the initial cost, IMO. The federal gov't had this same problem 30-40 years ago and came up with SGML as the solution then.
hmm... (Score:1)
Re:Why Linux? (Score:1)
Exactly. If you don't care about whether or not the program you use is software libre or not, why limit yourself to Linux? You want the multi-tasking stabilty of Unix? How about OS X?
Of course if you care about software libre, then the question changes. What software libre program can import FrameMaker documents?
An XML strategy (Score:4, Informative)
Your first step is to face a simple nasty fact: you will not find a third-party tool that lets you edit your Frame files. Lots of vendors claim to have foolproof filters for WP formats, but it's all smoke and mirrors. The formats are too complicated, and there's no simple mapping between them. So you only have two choices: find a way to continue using Frame, or make a big one-time conversion of all your files into another format.
The first choice is one I personally would avoid, mainly because I really dislike Frame. But it might be more practical. There are various ways you might go about this: buy everybody VMWare [vmware.com] licenses and use it to run the Windows version of Frame. Keep some of your SGI boxes around just to run Frame. (Since Unix Frame is an X app, you should be able to run it remotely. If this doesn't work, there's always terminal servers [tarantella.com].) Or run Windows Frame on top of WINE.
In your position, I'd prefer to get away from Frame's proprietary format once and for all. Yes, I know, I just said that foolproof filters don't exist. But if you're willing to invest the effort (a lot of effort, I'm afraid) you can use advanced tools to do a one-time conversion.
The leading tool for this is Webworks Publisher [webworks.com]. A limited version, which might be adequate for this task, is provided with FrameMaker 6.0. Pick a convenient XML schema, define a mapping between that schema and various Frame styles and formats, and there you are.
Once you have your documents in XML, you have a lot more options. You'll probably have to do a second transformation to a format of your choice. Why? Two reasons. First, the big XML authoring vendors seem to have no interest in Linux. (You might find something from a small vendor or in Open Source. But I've been thoroughly underwealmed by the offerings I've seen.) Second, your users will probably balk at becomming markup wonks. Not everybody want to think about document structure every time they dash off a memo.
Fortunately transforming XML into other formats is not a big deal.
Advocates of Abiword and similar programs will protest. Abiword uses XML as a native format. Why not just go directly from Frame to that format?
The problem is that the Abiword schema is a "data" schema -- it's all one big packet of rich text, with no attempt to isolate formatting. It's like RTF or MIF, only easier to parse. So when you transform something into Abiword XML, you're going to lose any information that Abiword doesn't know how to manage.
But Abiword might be a good choice anyway. It claims to have an XML/Docbook filter. If that woirks half-decently, you can transform your frame files into XML/Docbook (which is a very rich format, so you'd probably lose very little information). Keep your legacy files in that format, and import them into Abiword as needed. If Abiword proves unable to handle some of your more complex files, you can look at other alternatives.
Which is the great beauty of XML. If your current XML app isn't working out, there's always another one.
Which is not to say that XML is a magic bullet. XML transformations are tricky. A lot of XML technology is still under development. And, as Abiword and HTML demonstrate, you can't assume that you have the full power of markup flexability just because your documents use XML or SGML syntax.
Re:An XML strategy (Score:1)
> and for all. Yes, I know, I just said that foolproof filters don't exist. But if
> you're willing to invest the effort (a lot of effort, I'm afraid) you can use advanced
> tools to do a one-time conversion.
>
> The leading tool for this is Webworks Publisher [webworks.com]. A limited version,
> which might be adequate for this task, is provided with FrameMaker 6.0. Pick
> a convenient XML schema...
This isn't a bad idea, but it ignores an obvious route: get a copy of FrameMaker+SGML, do your document conversion to SGML inside FrameMaker, then export everything out to SGML (which, from there, is a trivial conversion to XML, if you want to end up there). Frame's SGML tools, and especially its automatic-structuring tools, are really quite decent.
Re:An XML strategy (Score:2)
Adobe Short Sightedness (Score:4, Interesting)
My organization is in exactly the same situation.
We've been running Framemaker on Sun's for about a decade.
Due to the superior raw price performance of the x86 platform, we will be moving to Linux over the next year.
We'd love to have Framemaker for Linux and would gladly pay for it. Many people feel it represents a superior offering for WYSIWYG document preparation compared to Microsoft Word, for example.
Unfortunately, it looks like Adobe is deliberately eroding its customer base for Framemaker on UNIX by not supporting Linux.
I expect our users will run Framemaker over the network via X windows from Sun servers if they really need it. Meanwhile, they will also probably start experimenting more with MS Word under VMWare (which connects well with Office Bees in the rest of the corporation), or try StarOffice 5.2 and, later, 6.0. A trend of the number of Frame users at our site decreasing year by year will continue and possibly accelerate as a consequence of Adobe's reluctance to bring out a Linux version of Frame.
Ever since they got bought out by Adobe I've had the impression that Framemaker is being managed in a short-sighted way. Either that, or there is a "bigger picture" with the rest of their products, etc. that I am missing.
However, with MacOS X, perhaps there's some hope that someone will see that "multiplatform support" in the UNIX world is no where near the bugaboo they fear from their years of experience with "multiplatform support" meaning Windows+Mac.
We'll do our migration to Linux with or without Adobe. Whether we do it with or without Framemaker several years from now is entirely up to them.
The X Windows System (Score:5, Informative)
Alternately, use Citrix Metaframe, and run framemaker on a windows server. That would probably be more expensive, less convenient, and so on. But if you need users to access other windows applications as well, it is a whole lot better than giving each user two machines, and having you administer them both.
use IRIX and X Windows to your Linux systems (Score:1)
SPARC emulation? (Score:1)
Has anybody considered doing a SPARC-on-LINUX user-mode emulation coupled with a Solaris personality? It won't help this guy, but technically it's not that hard.
Re:SPARC emulation? (Score:2)
Use frame, change the platform (Score:2)
There was a high level meeting between the bean counters and doc managers and Adobe's upper management. The result was a general feeling that Adobe couldn't manage their way out of a wet paper sack with written directions and a guide dog. Despite the fact that their 5 largest Frame customers fork over something like US$85 million per year for licenses, which according to their stockholders report is more than the cost of running the whole division, Adobe still doesn't want to develop for the non-M$ world. And they don't really want to develop Frame at all.
If you are getting rid of the SGI machines, you might consider migrating to a few powerful Sun SparcStations to hold off your migration plans for a few years. Other than that, the windoze machines will need to be bigger and beefier to run the latest Frame bloatware, and will cost you more in the long run.
Its doubtful anyone at Adobe these days is capable of absorbing a clue. Every one of their best sales and marketing 'roids have left in the last few years, they were the ones who realised that the top 5 customers were 100% non-M$ and they accounted for almost 35% of Frame revenues. Adobe has managed to alienate almost all the resellers in Europe, due to their fucked policies, leaving the user base searching out all alternatives.
Many of Adobe's largest customers lately have adopted purchasing policies prohibiting any further investment in Adobe products. I'm glad to see the exodus is spreading to smaller places as well. With any luck, within a few years Adobe will be just a bad memory.
the AC