What is Adobe FrameMaker 5.x?

Despite a quirky, UNIX-inspired interface, FrameMaker has long been the tool of choice for creating complex technical documents. It isn’t pretty, it isn’t intuitive — some keyboard shortcuts are downright bizarre — but FrameMaker has filled a niche in the world of desktop publishing, thanks largely to its powerful table-formatting features, along with its ability to handle long-document indexing and equation editing.

With the release of version 5.0, FrameMaker is actually starting to look and feel like a Macintosh program — the tool bar now appears in color, for example, and for the first time the program supports AppleScript. Granted, FrameMaker is still complex and quirky, but the improvements are welcome.

Page-Layout Features

Many of FrameMaker’s new features don’t break any new ground, but they make the program easier to use. For example, FrameMaker now supports text runarounds, so you can make text flow around the contours of a graphic object — a long-overdue feature that has been standard in other page-layout programs (not to mention basic packages such as ClarisWorks) for years. Another much-touted new feature — multicolumn text boxes — is old hat for QuarkXPress users.

Probably the best of the new pagelayout features is the ability to create text straddles — lines of text that straddle multiple columns. This allows you to place both headline and body text within a single text frame; the headline stretches across the entire frame, while the body text beneath it flow's in several columns. Tables also can straddle columns.

Release 5.0 also features beefed-up file-import and -export options. New and updated filters allow FrameMaker to import directly a wider variety of PC and Mac file formats. The program now lets you import text by reference — so that an image of the text appears on the FrameMaker page, where it can be formatted and reflowed; but the text itself remains editable in the source document. FrameMaker can be set to dynamically update the reference to the source document, pulling in the most recent edits (either automatically or at your command). You can also convert referenced text into editable FrameMaker text at any time.

Word Processing and Editing

FrameMaker is too slow and unwieldy to be a really practical word processor, but some of its word processing features are outstanding. Smart Spaces, for example, prevents you from typing more than one space at a time, eliminating unwanted multiple spaces between words. Search and replace capabilities are exceptionally powerful. You can search for items by paragraph style, character style, and a number of other specific attributes.

The program’s text-markup features are also excellent. You can set FrameMaker to automatically mark (with a vertical bar) any paragraphs in which you make editorial changes. The program’s Compare Documents command automatically compares two versions of a document and creates a comprehensive report showing all the changes that have been introduced. It also creates a new, composite version of the documents, with deletions and insertions clearly marked.

One of the program’s greatest strengths remains its table-editing features. For creating complex multipage tables, FrameMaker outshines every other page-layout package. You can easily create tables with repeating header rows and columns. In the Table Designer dialog box, you can apply borders as well as alternate column and row shading. And you can save table formats for repeated use.

Interface Problems

Despite the enhancements, FrameMaker remains awkward and complicated compared with other tools. For example, a simple desktop-publishing task, such as creating a drop cap, is a complicated, multistep process in FrameMaker. Even far less powerful word processing programs handle the task more gracefully.

The FrameMaker interface also has an alien feel to it. For example, you can’t type numbers in dialog-box fields using the numeric keypad. Also, there are plenty of keyboard shortcuts, but many are too weird to remember. (For example, to select all the text in a single table cell, you successively press the escape key, then the lowercase T, H, and A keys.)

Online Publishing Features

FrameMaker provides a rich set of tools for creating sophisticated online documents, with hypertext links between separate documents or between sections within a document. The hypertext documents can even include pop-up menus that allow users to navigate directly to a specific portion of a document. FrameMaker’s hypertext documents can be distributed to non-FrameMaker users with FrameReader, a utility that allows you to read, search, and print read-only hypertext documents. FrameReader is included on the CD-ROM version of FrameMaker 5.0. Users who purchase FrameMaker on floppy disks can download the program from Frame Technology’s BBS or World Wide Web site or request a copy from the company.

The bad new's is that creating FrameMaker hypertext documents is a terribly complex, unintuitive process that involves typing in a lot of special codes with the users* manual close at hand. Even working from the manual isn’t that helpful because it provides little information about hypertext command syntax, and its examples are sparse.

FrameMaker 5.0 also provides a modest springboard into Web publishing by including WebWorks Lite, a module that lets you generate HTML-tagged text within FrameMaker documents. Unfortunately, WebWorks Lite is slow, has a limited number of HTML tags, and provides no way to edit and polish tagged text or to handle exported graphics.

The Last Word

FrameMaker isn’t user-friendly enough to really succeed as a general-purpose page-layout and word processing tool, but it is a solid, powerful program, and it has unique features that make it a smart choice for technical-document creation.

Schorr, Joseph. (November 1995). FrameMaker 5.0. Macworld. (pg. 63).

Download Adobe FrameMaker 5.x for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• MC68040 processor
• 16 MB RAM
• 25-85 MB hard disk available
• 640 x 400 display
• CD-ROM drive
• System 7.5

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II