Framemaker 11

[bowen192]

I don't know if I dare.

[Bob_Niland]

For those wondering:

Press Release

TCS4

FM11

Haven't examined it all myself yet.

[Mark Southee]

Had a quick look at the marketting fluff. Seems FM is becoming more like a main stream XML editor (Oxygen, XMetaL etc)

Not happy about TCS 4 ditching Photoshop for Illustrator

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I remember a discussion about that - I think you can still keep your PS install when upgrading to TCS4 (haven't tested it out yet)

[Mark Southee]

I'm in the fortunate postion of having both TCS 3, and Creative Suite Std 5.5, so it doesn't worry me as much as it might. When I get my TCS 4 upgrade I might lose the PS 5 in TCS 3 and reinstall PS 5.5, which I ignored when installing Creative Suite. As long as I can keep the edit images in PS straight from FM, I'll be happy.

I don't use Illustrator that much, but I do use InDesign a bit.

[Harry28586]

The reason we have Ai in TCS4 is because it fixes lot of issues we had with the vector images being imported in Framemaker.

You can still keep using Ps to edit the images or can use Ai to create the vector images and import in your Frame project.

The native XML editor for the users who works with XML a lot and works with EDD and DTD's a lot,it will save a lott of time.

Use os XSLT is also there and now you can publish to Epub V 3 if you have TCS 4  and i beleive no other software can publish to epub3 .

Its interesting.

Harpreet

[Bob_Niland]

> Seems FM is becoming more like a main stream XML editor ...

Perhaps the "code view" should have been called "code mode", as it appears to allow edits to the raw XML.

> Not happy about TCS 4 ditching Photoshop for Illustrator

Either, alone, is insufficient, for most users. I use both AI and Ps about equally (and extensively) in my FM work.

A few customers, such as one I'm providing content to right now, do all art as line art, and might not need Ps. But even in my local work, when the vector objects get too large, they get rasterized to bitmapped TIFFs, and for that we use Ps.

By bundling AI, however, that provides the buyer with a choice of which Ps version to separately obtain, or whether to use another raster editor altogether. The choices in vector editors are rather more limited, so if ADBE is going to bundle only one image edtitor, AI isn't a bad choice.

[Bob_Niland]

Further useful summaries.

An Adobe blog article:

http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2012/07/framemaker-11-and-framemaker-publishing-server-11-are-here.h...

An outside review:

http://blog.leximation.com/2012/07/179/

[Bob_Niland]

> I don't know if I dare.

It's probably worth mentioning that anyone who wants to try FM11 or TCS4 can download it and do so. It's a fully featured, but time-bombed, install.

However, don't do it on a machine that also has installed any other version of FM, Acrobat, and for TCS4; Illustrator, RH or any other TC component. The demo install is apt to wreck the older versions, requiring a complete uninstall and re-install, assuming you have the old media, keys, etc.

Yes, if you're on Win7/64 Pro, Ult or Ent, you could install the demo in XP Mode, but be sure that:

1. You can (CPU has Virtualization, and you're not on Win not-so-Premium or below), and
2. You are willing to pay the XPM penalty (loss of 1GB RAM for starters).

Adobe also offers a browser-based trial.