Re: oops

[Pam Niedermayer <pam@pinehill.com>]

I think Framemaker would have been perfect for composing and laying out 
Post-Factory, or any other magazine or book or manual, no red dots or 
bouncing rectangles. Superficially, it looks like a word processor, but 
with sophisticated style sheets that, once you get into is wonderful. 
And these days you can do some trick stuff with web publishing, etc.

InDesign I never tried, heard it wasn't all it could be. I also used 
Quark for advertisements since it was the only electronic form accepted 
by all the computer rags at the time, it was pretty good. I suspect that 
if Adobe wanted to kill Pagemaker, which certainly deserved to die, it 
was because the code was old and patched to high heaven, very hard to 
maintain.

I have this affection for well written software, there's so damn little 
of it out there, and hate to see it maligned. Thanks for your 
retraction. I also have this thing about poorly written, buggy, software 
like that produced by MS, for which I have nothing but disdain. It's 
hard to believe they call themselves professionals at anything besides 
brutish business practices.

Pam

Judy Seigel wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2007, Pam Niedermayer wrote:
>
> > As to Adobe and Framemaker, when they bought Framemaker's owner (too 
> > long ago to remember the particulars), I begged them not to wreck 
> > Framemaker. Three years ago I begged Adobe to not kill the Mac 
> > version. I think those are the only two things I've ever requested of 
> > Adobe. At least they didn't wreck it.
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Judy writes:
>
> One moral of this story (among many) is, do not write about technical 
> matters when your mind (or its simulacrum) is elsewhere. Obviously I 
> conflated Framemaker and In Design.... which is not to exculpate 
> either one of them, but does impair discussion.
>
> My only experience with Framemaker was when a then-guru put it on my 
> computer and let all those bouncing red squares & rectangles loose. 
> (That was "Framemaker," no?)  My reaction was, I am not the "genius" 
> who could design anything while beset by moving geometry, least of all 
> in red.
>
> And Pam, for all I know either or both of those programs were as fine 
> as you found them -- for your purposes. For my purposes, the one I 
> used (In Design) simply and purely sucked !
>
> Judy