So what is new with Adobe FrameMaker 8?
• Unicode Support – you can now edit and support content in multiple languages as well as author content for global audiences with dictionary and hyphenation support for more languages.
• DITA Support – FrameMaker 8 now supports the DITA standard. DITA is the XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. You can now use a prebuilt DITA application to author, publish, and distribute topic-oriented information in XML as well as creating DITA maps.
• Rich Media Support – Now with the Technical Communications Suite, you can combine content into multiple forms. You can create more engaging online documentation by incorporating 3D models, rich Adobe Flash Player compatible animations, and simulations created with Adobe Captivate software, as well as creating Adobe PDF files incorporating live 3D models.
• Text Edit Tracking and Multiple Undo – now allows you to highlight, accept, and reject text changes as well as undo multiple changes with a single click using the History Palette.
• Microsoft Office 2007 Support – will now let you import content created in Microsoft Word and Excel 2007.
Enhancements include
• Conditional Output – will let you create single source variations of the same document for different channels and purposes. You can now use conditional tags and build complex Boolean expressions for defining output filters in structured and unstructured mode. You can distinguish multi-conditional text through the improved color coding.
• XML Round-tripping – lets you now round trip web-based graphics in XML workflows.
• XML Schemas – are now available as an alternative to DTDs for defining the structure of your content.
There are a lot of very cool enhancements contained within Adobe FrameMaker 8 not the least is the way in interacts with the other packages included with the suite. For example, I took a 3D model of a brake system that was created by someone else and saved as a .U3D file; A U3D file is an industry standard for 3D modeling and is supported by the PDF format. So without having any knowledge of what it takes to create this file, I can drop it into the FrameMaker project and use it to create an interactive product.
![Adobe Technical Communication Suite [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Fly5GJ49L._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - Michael O'Donnell
Dear reader,
while there is a reason why Adobe would put this bundle on the market, ie. there is a demand for it, I can only say that this bundle isn't worth what it is promising.
I have purchased it and by the sound of it, it should have performed the funcionality that I need, but technically, my computer crashed when I captured etc.
By now, I am using different tools which are doing the job they promise!
Yours,
Michael
2 - T. Michael Testi
Michael,
Thanks for the comments.
I have purchased it and by the sound of it, it should have performed the funcionality that I need, but technically, my computer crashed when I captured etc.
While I am not really sure what this means, did you contact Adobe with the problem? Were they not able to help?
The only crash problem I have heard of with FrameMaker has been with a font cache when having a large amount of fonts on your system. Clearing the font cache clears up the problem.
You should contact Adobe.
T.
3 - RJ Jacquez
Hi Michael,
My name is RJ Jacquez, and I'm the Product Evangelist for the Technical Communication Suite at Adobe and I can tell you that we have been very successful with the Tech Comm Suite since the launch and all of our customers are very happy with it, so I would love to talk to you about the problem you mentioned, so please feel free to email me using the first letter of my first name, followed by my last name at adobe dot com.
Sincerely,
RJ Jacquez
Adobe Systems
4 - Christine
From the review, it seems to me that the Adobe Technical Communication Suite is more oriented towards the printed manual output. (Whereas the old RoboHelp was more oriented towards Help, the Word output was not very good.) How convenient is the generation of Help output with the Adobe Technical Communication Suite?
I used the old RoboHelp. It used a lot of special tags so that the source code was impossible to edit. How is this with the new RoboHelp?