FrameMaker alive and kicking: After much whispering, Adobe have now formally announced the imminent arrival of FrameMaker 8. This new, updated version of FrameMaker is rumoured to involve a pretty extensive rewrite of the code, and includes some features that those of us involved in the technical translation world have had on our wishlists for some time.
Headline news for me goes to the fact that with the new Version 8, FrameMaker finally gets Unicode support. As an experienced technical translation company, Salford Translations does a lot of translation and typesetting of manuals written in FrameMaker (we translate both structured FrameMaker and unstructured FrameMaker). Whilst FrameMaker is great for manuals in western European languages such as French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish, the absence of Unicode support made DTP work in languages such as Polish ..... interesting. There were always solutions, but they were always that: solutions and work-arounds. Introducing full Unicode support to FrameMaker solves the underlying problem, and will be widely welcomed in the international technical communications sector.
Another welcome addition for me is the addition of direct support for the Oasis DITA standard. I sit on DITA's "Translation Subcommittee", helping develop this open standard in ways that ensure it is translation-friendly, and having direct support for DITA in FrameMaker is going to be a good thing. (There has been an add-in available for FM for a while now, which offers the ability to import DITA documents into FrameMaker, but direct integration is always better than an add-on).
Finally, the long overdue inclusion of a usable track changes feature will make FrameMaker 8 into a more powerful tool for technical authors, especially for those working in teams.
My friend Sarah O'Keefe, author of the excellent "Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7" book (and widely regarded as a top FrameMaker trainer and guru) has more info on her Palimpsest blog at the Scriptorium website.
Headline news for me goes to the fact that with the new Version 8, FrameMaker finally gets Unicode support. As an experienced technical translation company, Salford Translations does a lot of translation and typesetting of manuals written in FrameMaker (we translate both structured FrameMaker and unstructured FrameMaker). Whilst FrameMaker is great for manuals in western European languages such as French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish, the absence of Unicode support made DTP work in languages such as Polish ..... interesting. There were always solutions, but they were always that: solutions and work-arounds. Introducing full Unicode support to FrameMaker solves the underlying problem, and will be widely welcomed in the international technical communications sector.
Another welcome addition for me is the addition of direct support for the Oasis DITA standard. I sit on DITA's "Translation Subcommittee", helping develop this open standard in ways that ensure it is translation-friendly, and having direct support for DITA in FrameMaker is going to be a good thing. (There has been an add-in available for FM for a while now, which offers the ability to import DITA documents into FrameMaker, but direct integration is always better than an add-on).
Finally, the long overdue inclusion of a usable track changes feature will make FrameMaker 8 into a more powerful tool for technical authors, especially for those working in teams.
My friend Sarah O'Keefe, author of the excellent "Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7" book (and widely regarded as a top FrameMaker trainer and guru) has more info on her Palimpsest blog at the Scriptorium website.
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