Adobe FrameMaker 12 vs. FrameMaker 11

Report · May 20, 2015

Hi,

I have a question for someone regarding Adobe FrameMaker, specifically Technical Communication Suite 5 (with FrameMaker 12) vs. Technical Communication Suite 4 (with FrameMaker 11.) I am looking into obtaining a version of one of these, but do not have experience with the latest versions of FrameMaker to make an informed decision (the last version I used on a daily basis was FrameMaker 7.1, so I am a little behind). Does anyone have any input regarding if paying almost double the price for TCS5 vs. TCS4 is worth it? (I realize that Illustrator has been removed from TCS5, which I did not like; but I heard that the interface and features of FrameMaker 12 in TCS5 was greatly improved from 11 for ease of use?)

I am going to use the software for writing instruction sheets, operator and service manuals and service bulletins. I just wanted to make sure that the added features of the latest version outweigh the additional cost. Does anyone have any opinion or thoughts?

Thank you for consideration.

Brad

Report · May 21, 2015

I’m not even sure if you can purchase TCS4 these days, but even if you could, there were some fairly major bugs with FM11 that caused fatal crashes to happen all the time. The UI between FM11 and 12 is only slightly different (it is improved IMHO), but the feature that I’m really liking in FM12 is the “Restore Last Session” feature – it lets you save all open files & just exit out of FM. Then when you start FM back up, you can pick up exactly where you left off in each open file. If you’re not really interested in producing any form of help output with a high degree of control, then I would suggest just using standalone FM12. It’s got the publishing features of RH built in already.