Two years and many development hours later, Adobe Systems has finally unveiled FrameMaker 6.0. This is the most powerful and impressive version yet of its award-winning software for producing and publishing content-heavy documents for print, Web, or CD-ROM distribution.
FrameMaker is the industry standard for technical writers whose complex needs go beyond word processing software, with its inability to handle large documents loaded with screen shots and cross-references. This high-end tool combines word processing and desktop publishing features (rotation, image resizing, font and color management) with robust document management capabilities. Although FrameMaker includes some drawing tools and a small clip-art collection, it’s no substitute for Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress.
FrameMaker’s strength lies in its superior book-building functionahty. Users organize individual files into collections called books — containers that allow global manipulation of properties such as page and chapter numbering. Book files reduce labor by generating tables of contents, indexes, reports, and other hsts. FrameMaker’s Smart Document architecture keeps content sepaate from format, allowing authors to alter the layout of a document or an entire book with one swift click.
FrameMaker has captured attention with its support of single-sourcing — the ability to author a large quantity of content once, then publish it in multiple formats. Version 6.0 improves upon previous releases by packaging FrameMaker with Quadralay Web Works’ Pubhsher Standard Edition..., an apphcation that easily converts FrameMaker content into Web-ready XML, HTML, and Dynamic HTML (including Cascading Style Sheets). By mapping FrameMaker formatting tags to appropriate HTML tags and selecting a predefined WebWorks template, users can point and click to convert FrameMaker files to the Web-ready format of their choice. Some users will find this new functionality alone reason enough to upgrade. One caveat: To modify the predefined Web templates, you’ll need to either tweak them using an HTML editor or upgrade to Publisher Professional Edition — but unfortunately, Quadralay does not produce the Professional Edition for Mac.
We tested FrameMaker 6.0 on a Rev A iMac running OS 8.6. We converted an 8,000-page, 13-volume software manual into PDF and instructed FrameMaker (using its conditional text feature) to build smaller HTML files, which we then used to create an online help system. The conversion process was a breeze, thanks to the step-by-step guidance of the New Project wizard.
Adobe made numerous minor but extremely useful enhancements, including tighter integration with Adobe Acrobat, XML file export, CSS creation, and easier book management features (including drag-and-drop file organization, simplified hst generation, and global spelling checks). Users can even import individual pages of a PDF file into a FrameMaker document.
Although we can’t say enough good things about FrameMaker 6.0, we’d like to see a few problems corrected. The help system is significantly better than version 5.5’s but still needs work. It’s pretty — however, the Find command doesn’t locate all the relevant topics in the index. Additionally, having to refresh the screen when you edit text in a FrameMaker book file is a recurrent inconvenience that Adobe should have repaired several versions ago.
Nevertheless, if you’re a current FrameMaker user, you should upgrade. The WebWorks Publisher interface is worth every penny of the upgrade price. If you publish large quantities of data in multiple formats and media, don’t waste time wrestling with Microsoft Word. FrameMaker 6.0 is your best bet.
Abel, Scott, P. (September 2000). FrameMaker 6.0. MacAddict. (pg. 56).
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
80 / 
2015-07-22 / 
53f3c33725a4ca44438f094179851b1ef53f5782 / 
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Adobe_Frame_6.0.1_Inst._k.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
