Just as Adobe once pioneered paper-based desktop publishing with its PageMaker software, FrameMaker makes the same claim for electronic publishing in the Internet era. First and foremost, FrameMaker lets you lay out your page content with a capable set of tools and wizards. You can assemble small or large documents of even hundreds of pages from separate files (which can be imported from Microsoft Word or WordPerfect files as well as PDF and other formats). You can also add hyperlinks and graphics to your document easily.

In testing, we assembled an "e-book" from a literary manuscript of over 200 pages, broken into a dozen chapters. FrameMaker includes solid word-processing abilities--even a spell checker and thesaurus--plus text and graphics layout tools, so it was easy to add chapter headings and tweak text as we created the larger document. A real strength here is that as you add pages, FrameMaker updates all links (along with page numbers) between the table of contents, chapters, and index. The application includes a separate book file format and offers templates for blank chapters and other book components, so you can create and store books easily. An absolutely indispensable feature here is the ability to search and replace words across all sections of a document.

Another notable strength of FrameMaker 6.0 is its support for today's electronic publishing standards. Once your FrameMaker documents are assembled, you can distribute them in HTML, PDF, and XML. A separate bundled utility, Quadralay's WebWorks Publisher Standard Edition, takes you even further with support for XML with Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) and XSL. (These options let you view your content with more precise formatting within today's browsers.) In all, with its strong mix of layout features and support for a wide variety of electronic standards, FrameMaker will help anyone publish documents online successfully. --Rich Dragan--This text refers to the Windows version of this software.

This complaint aside, FrameMaker is still the best tool available for what it does best, long structured documents. Anyone that's tried to write a long technical manual in Microsoft Word will appreciate FrameMaker's ability to divide the document into logical chapters and tie them all together with its book function.

FrameMaker supports cross-references, integrated drawing commands and the ability to generate a number of lists and tables (tables of contents, tables of figures, alphabetical index, etc.) An integrated equation editor is also available for typesetting equations.

FrameMaker is not for the faint at heart; it requires a disciplined approach to your documents and planning before writing, but for the types of manuals that it was designed for, its still the best tool available at an affordable price. A variant product, FrameMaker+SGML provides SGML support for about half the cost of competing products.


The Best Word Processor for Book Writers   June 24, 2000
 10 out of 10 found this review helpful

Yes, it's more expensive than Word 98 or AppleWorks, two fine word processors that may provide all you need. Nevertheless, FrameMaker (called "Frame" by many users) is my tool of choice for working on book projects, from non-fiction to novels.

Why? Partly because Frame is fast, stable, and just a pleasure to work with. But that alone wouldn't justify the price. Frame's real power for writers comes from its Book feature, which uses a Book Window to display the chapters of a book. Chapters are worked on separately and saved as individual files, but Frame manages and presents them in the Book Window as part of a single book. You can add, delete, and edit chapters as you go without a problem, and Frame takes care of autonumbering your pages so that the page numbers in one chapter pick up where the last chapter left off. The Book Window also displays the total page count, a very helpful feature for writers who try to work by a daily quota, or just like to see constant progress being made (don't we all!).

Until you see the Book feature in action, it's hard to understand how useful it is, but if you've ever worked with a large document as a single file in Word, you'll appreciate Frame's ability to handle smaller, manageable sections of text that are all maintained as part of the same book.

As for fear that Frame is too hard to learn -- don't worry! The Book Window feature, and all basic word processing in Frame, is very easy, really no more difficult than any other word processor. The main difference is that instead of Styles, Frame uses Paragraph and Character "tags" that are stored in catalogues that you can access and modify at any time. Honestly, Frame's implentation of many formatting features, such as tags, master pages, and the ability to import all the formatting from one document into another, was much easier for me to learn than Word ever was. It all works and functions quite logically, if not intuitively, and you'll quickly get the hang of how Frame gets the job done. Once you catch on, you may find, as I did, that Frame is really much simpler, smarter, and more efficient than many other word processors.

Here's my advice. Buy a copy of FrameMaker 5.5.6 for Dummies -- it's available here on Amazon, and it's a great value. It's very well-written and organized, and includes much of what you need to know in the first 100 pages. Start there, then read the later chapter on working with Books, and you'll be ready to roll. Even better, demo versions are included on the CD-ROM (although the Mac version requires a demo serial # that you'll have to get from Adobe), so you can practice what you learn and decide if this product is right for you. Although version 6 adds some new and helpful features, it works almost exactly the same as v.5.5.6, so your time learning that earlier version is time very well spent.

Again, this is a professional writing and layout tool that anyone who has ever used any word processor can master very quickly. If you write novels or non-fiction books, give this a try! Once I started using it, I couldn't go back to a regular word processor for full-length book projects.