[34] in Framemaker_Discussion
Article on Frame for Summer Insider
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Naomi Schmidt)
Thu Jun 24 11:34:52 1993
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 93 11:50:10
From: nschmidt@MIT.EDU (Naomi Schmidt)
To: frame@MIT.EDU, dmw@MIT.EDU, gjackson@MIT.EDU
Cc: nschmidt@MIT.EDU
What follows is a first draft of an article on Frame for an issue of the
Athena Insider due to be on faculty desks in early August. I am sending
it out for your review and would appreciate any feedback and/or
comments.
Thanks - Naomi
FrameMaker on Athena
We're pleased to announce that the professional documentation
preparation system FrameMaker is now available on Athena, running on the
DECstation, RS6000, and Sun workstations. (FrameMaker will not be
available on the older VAXstation workstations.) The acquisition of
FrameMaker is the result of a long process, which began last winter with
a comparative evaluation of a number of documentation systems that run
on UNIX platforms. The criteria that we used in our evaluation
includedthe ability to operate in the Athena environment, the ability to
build large documents (e.g. theses), a good equation processor, the
ability to include tables, the ability to include Postscript figures,
good file conversion capabilities, and affordability. Once the team
doing the evaluation had recommended that we bring Frame into the Athena
environment, a period of negotiation with the vendor followed.
Frame is one of the growing list of products that operates with a
license server, meaning that a limited number of users can be running
the application simultaneously. We are currently licensed for 450
concurrent users running FrameMaker, 50 users running International
FrameMaker (which allows for spell checking in a number of foreign
languages) and 250 users running FrameViewer (a read only version of the
product which should be used for viewing and printing documents such as
course handouts).
FrameMaker has a number of filters which allow users to import documents
that have been produced on other platforms and using other document
preparation systems. These filters will retain formatting
characteristics, but may not transfer embedded graphics or equations
properly. However, files produced with FrameMaker running on any
hardware platform are directly transferrable from one platform to
another.
Faculty who are interested in using FrameMaker to produce class handouts
for on-line viewing are encouraged to contact the Faculty Liaisons for
assistance and guidelines.
Since we just acquired FrameMaker this summer, and because it is such a
rich and powerful tool, we are learning its intricacies as we go along.
Although we expect to have an introductory Frame on Athena document
ready for the start of the Fall semester, we do not yet consider that
this product to be fully supported at that time. The Athena Consultants
will answer questions to the best of their ability, but are still
climbing up the learning curve. Please bear with us. As our own
collective expertise increases during the coming months, support for
Frame will increase, with the expectation that eventually it will be as
fully supported as are the other members of our Athena software suite.
