Re: Adobe FrameMaker End-of-Life for Macintosh Platform

[Larry.Kollar@xxxxxxxxxx]

Sheesh... Dov, I hope you don't mind me elaborating here. I only get
100 messages/day after the spam. :-)

> ... I was simply stating the 
> technical facts to counter a number of messages on this list by 
well-meaning
> contributors. These messages have taken some terrible leaps of faith 
> regarding what could have or should be done for a "quick fix" for 
FrameMaker
> on the Macintosh, more specifically MacOS X.

I *think* the original idea was to port the Unix version of Frame to
run under OSX's X11. Even as an outsider (vis. Adobe), and someone
who would consider Frame-under-X11 a better choice than no Frame at all,
I'd have to agree with Dov on that one. I've fiddled with several open
source projects, and it's not always a simple matter of compiling. Look
at OpenOffice, for example -- version 1.1.1 runs on Linux/X11 just fine,
but the developers are *still* having problems getting past 1.0.3 on
MacOSX/X11. Any large project (especially one with a GUI) is going to
have issues like that.

And just because it compiles & runs doesn't mean that it works. There
can be subtle bugs that have to be discovered and fixed, and those are
often the hardest kind to fix.

> Unlike some contributors to this list over the last week, I have not
> questioned anyone's motives, intelligence, etc. Nor have I tried to
> convince anyone that last week's announcement was good and wonderful.

True. I want to think I've done the same, outside of one attempt at
humor that flopped.... So Dov & I have butted heads a couple of times
in the past, that doesn't mean I don't respect and appreciate his
input and contribution to the list (and the beverage-on-me offer still
stands, Dov).

> My style is terse. I am not a "suit" or a PR wonk, just a dumb engineer
> here at Adobe (and not even part of the FrameMaker organization) trying 
to
> supply technical answers to what are usually print workflow and system
> configuration issues.

Um, isn't "dumb engineer" an oxymoron? The old definition "unable to
speak" certainly doesn't fit either. And I'd rather have an engineer
than a suit answering questions on this list any day.

That's my 2 cents.

--
Larry Kollar, Senior Technical Writer, ARRIS
"Content creators are the engine that drives
value in the information life cycle."
    -- Barry Schaeffer, on XML-Doc


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