framemaker 5.5 won't install

FrameMaker 5.5 was designed to install and run in the 16-bit environment of Windows 3.1 and is a 16-bit application.

Forgetting the issue of whether you can find your serial number, it is unlikely to either install or run on Windows 7 and certainly not at all on any 64-bit version of Windows.

          - Dov

dianederooy wrote: I must have asked this question recently, since the subject line came up automatically. But I haven't gotten an answer so perhaps I'm wrong about that. Here's my question: I have old versions of FrameMaker. When I bought Frame 5.0, it cost a fortune & I had to have someone come in for two days to train my team to use it. In the end, I was the only one who ever did. It was & is complicated software & to use it well, you pretty much have to be a genius or work with it all the time. Sadly, neither situation applies to me. I really just want to create indexes. I'm enrolled in an online course via UC-Berkeley (I live on a small island in the state of Washington, USA, near the Canadian border) where I will be trained to index books. Among the relevant Yahoo groups set up for indexing, there is one devoted to Frame. It gets about one post per year, if that, because so few people really understand how great Frame is for creating indexes--or used to be, anyway. I wanted to create some sample indexes & share them with that group so they could see how powerful the software is. I just got a new computer with Windows 7 loaded as part of my school grant. My latest version of Frame is 5.5. I tried to install my software on my computer & got a message, repeatedly, telling me I was entering the wrong key numbers & letters. There was one letter or number that was difficult to read, as the label had torn & split it. It seemed to be either a 5 or a 3, or perhaps even a B or E. I tried a few combinations, but no dice. Is there some reason I can't install this, aside from the fact that I might be entering the wrong key? I feel I should be able to install & use the software I paid for, especially since it's not for profit but for education. I have no desire to upgrade, since I believe I would most likely not be able to learn a newer, more complex version of the software. I'm 15 years older & about 15 times less intelligent than I was back then (I'll be 60 this summer). If I bought a newer version, or even upgraded, it would take me so long to learn how to use it, I'd be dead before I ever got the chance. Can anyone help me? diane

Hi, Diane:

First, is there any chance you have the original manual, disk jewel case, registration card, and package that the software came with? You may have a clean copy of the label on the jewel case, registration card, or even the outer box itself.

Have  you tried going to Adobe.com's home page, and clicking Sign In? You probably have an Adobe ID if you frequent these fora. I can't remember if an Adobe ID is required to participate.

Once signed in, if you're not taken to the My Account page, click on your name at the right end of the navigation bar, and choose My Account. On this page, click View Product Registrations, to see if you've ever registered the product.

Yes, I remember those dot-matrix condensed-font license numbers with ambiguous squiggles for zeroes, eights, threes, fives, sixes, and perhaps others. One comfort is that the letters don't go up to letter "Oh," so that's one fewer combination you'll need to try if your license is not registered. A real false economy, trying to make long numbers fit on short labels. I'm sure increased tech support calls just decoding the jumbles.

Have you tried calling Adobe Customer Support (not Tech Support) and asking for help in interpreting the abused and inscrutable characters and digits? If you're not registered, for sanity create a gridded table with as many columns as the complete license requires, including dashes, then enter the license as best you can, then for each possibly ambiguous character, create rows that systematically try all possible combinations of those doubtful characters. If you've ever tried to suss out the remote-control codes for undocumented TVs, media players, etc., this will feel familiar.

As to compatibility, if you name your Windows version, perhaps someone on the list can answer from experience whether or not your version will run on it. Windows 7 and some earlier releases have the ability to set an application's compatibility to an earlier release. I'm a Mac guy almost completely now (using FrameMaker when necessary with Parallels and Windows XP SP3, on the Mac,) so I'm not sure, but I think right-clicking on the actual maker.exe will give the option to set compatibility. Otherwise, either someone on the list can guide you better, or a Google search for "setting windows compatibility" without quotes should find useful info.

I'm way older than you. I started learning FrameMaker with version 2 around '89 on Mac, and became a trainer a few years later, using UNIX, Mac, and Windows. I'm not sure I taught anyone your age, but close to it, I'm sure. Here's the thing I wish I could cure one for all time: FrameMaker ISN'T HARD OR COMPLEX! WRITING TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION IS HARD AND COMPLEX! ANY COMPLETE BOOK PROJECT IS HARD AND COMPLEX. IN THE OLD DAYS (like when you were 30, maybe, or 20) WRITERS WROTE ON PAPER OR IN WORD OR SOME TEXT EDITOR LIKE vi ON UNIX,) AND HANDED THE TEXT OFF TO SOMEONE WHO SET IT IN METAL TYPE, OR ENCODED IT FOR COMPUTER TYPESETTING, THEN PRINTED TO REGULAR PAPER OR PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER AND RETURNED IT TO THE WRITER FOR CORRECTIONS, WHO THEN RETURNED IT TO THE ENCODER. PERHAPS THE CIRCLE INCLUDED PROOFREADERS, COPY EDITORS, TECHNICAL EDITORS, ETC. ULTIMATELY THE DOCUMENT WAS PRINTED, BOUND, SHIPPED, AND SOLD.

WHAT'S HARD NOW IS THAT ALL THESE JOBS ARE CONDENSED INTO MANY FEWER HUMANS, BECAUSE THE SOFTWARE MAKES IT POSSIBLE! OK?

I didn't leave out indexing, just deferred it a bit. The professional indexers - they're organized into at least one professional society - mostly feel that the indexing task should be separated from the writing task. Either write first, then read and index later, or hand off the indexing to a pro. Modern software since at least the '90s enables the writer to embed indexing codes while writing. Sometimes writers are given the indexing task to reduce the headcount and apparent cost of a project. Discuss this with writers who've been through the experience for various opinions on true economy (fixing bad indexes costs money) and quality (customer support costs for remedying incomplete, unclear, or wrong information and the indexes based on it.)

Everything FrameMaker can do is at one or another time part of the book-creation and publishing process. Not all projects need all tasks, not all tasks need to be done by one person.

Professional indexers like proprietary indexing tools, not the authoring tools writers use, like FrameMaker. So, the FrameMaker indexing forum may be scantily-attended because nobody in the circle uses FrameMaker to index, or because FrameMaker's indexing is so straightforward to master, that only the thorniest problems go to the specialized forum, while most common questions go the popular FrameMaker fora.

If you're going to be working with files prepared in later versions of FrameMaker than the one you have, whoever creates them must save them as Maker Interchange Format, aka "MIF," to be openable in earlier releases like yours. Your files needn't be saved as MIF to be openable in later releases. Depending on which versions of FrameMaker are used on a project, some things won't go smoothly through MIF and back, so you may sooner or later need to get a newer FrameMaker. Adobe only honors two versions back for upgrades, so FrameMaker 5.x is useless to obtain upgrade pricing. However, as a registered student, which you seem to be, there's a low educational price. The software is the same as the non-educational package, but the license isn't upgradeable to the next release. Some Adobe product End User License Agreements, aka EULA, have changed recently, to permit the use of educational-licensed copies for commercial projects. You'd need to read the FrameMaker EULA on this site, or perhaps someone on the forum can quote authoritatively whether FrameMaker's EULA permits commercial use.

For learning indexing, I don't believe that anything substantial has changed from 5.x to present day. This is good for reuse of learned skills, but bad for those who persist in submitting indexing feature-enhancement requests to Adobe here wish.

BRIEF SENIOR-ORIENTED PEP TALK: GET OVER IT! If you're enrolled in Berkeley, you can do FrameMaker!

Search Google for terms like "FrameMaker online free tutorial," and similar terms without quotes for lots of resource links from everywhere on the 'Net including these Adobe sites and its fora and Adobe TV videos.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Diane,

Since FrameMaker 5.5 did not know anything about UAC you might have a hard time running this under Windows 7. If you have the Professional version I rather recommend to use Virtual PC to create virtual machine maybe with Windows XP (or 2000, or NT4).

I hope it is FrameMaker 5.5.6, the license code has this format:

30-0-01-01-5-XXXXX-XXXXXX

It may start with 20 (for the US English version, I seem to remember) and the sequences of 5 and 6 Xs are digits or characters A…F.

This should allow you to find out if your license is formally OK.

OTOH, since you upgraded to Windows 7 (which is a whole lot different from Windows 15 years back, I don’t think the difference to FrameMaker 10 is any larger, well, apart from the UI for many people only very few things changed.

- Michael

PS: I found my FrameMaker 5.5.6 registration code in my Adobe Account under "View Product Registration", since I registered it in July 2000 (together with my FrameMaker 6 upgrade).

PS added by: Michael Müller-Hillebrand

From the sounds of it - it's probably a typo on the key. However, I suspect that on a Win7 machine you'd be hard-pressed to get old FM 5.5 running on it unless you've set up the XP virtual machine that comes with some flavours of Win7 (old software+new O/S usually equals much grief). If you're completely frustrated in your attempts to install and activate your copy of 5.5, I'd check out either running the latest FM version (10) in the freebie online sandbox or as a 30 day trial version. See the Tech Comm Suite page for details about the trial versions. If you're looking for some training on indexing in FM, I'd suggest the free wiki at scriptorium.com. Sarah et al really wrote the book on FM - I'd highly recommend it.