[7109] in Consulting_FYI
New Version of Frame!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anne R LaVin)
Fri Aug 26 19:16:19 1994
To: cfyi@MIT.EDU
Cc: carla@MIT.EDU, lavin@MIT.EDU, alexp@MIT.EDU, pgalt@MIT.EDU, dot@MIT.EDU,
dryfoo@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 19:15:53 EDT
From: Anne R LaVin <lavin@MIT.EDU>
We have caused a new version of Frame (version 4) to be released into
the Athena universe.
What does this mean? It means that on Sun and IBM workstations, users
will get FrameMaker version 4 by default. On DECstations, they will
continue to get version 3, since Frame says they will never produce an
upgrade for that platform.
While it appears to be true that version 3 documents will migrate
easily into version 4, the reverse is NOT necessarily true. (There
are new features in 4 which do not exist in 3, and hence don't migrate
well.) So we recommend that users refrain from switching back and
forth if they can help it.
Users get a (hopefully) helpful message when they start Frame, telling
them what version of things they're getting; there is a nice 1-page
document at Graphic Arts describing what's going on, and pointing
users to the soon-to-be-available "FrameMaker (version 4) on Athena
document" and to the extensive online help in the meantime. There is
also a summary of the differences between the two versions in the
Athena 7.7 Release Notes in the Chapter "Locker Software Upgrades ->
FrameMaker".
The older version of FrameMaker is now in the locker "frame.old". The
command "add frame.old; maker" will bring up version 3 on all Athena
machines, but you should not recommend this to users except as an
absolute last resort. (For instance, FrameMaker version 3 appears to
always eventually core dump - though not always at the same point - on
Athena Suns running 7.7. So definitely don't recommend it for Sun
users.) A few weeks from now we will phase out this old version of
the locker.
We have tested the startup on all types of Athena workstations, and
everything appears to work normally. However, I will be checking my
email over the weekend in case anything goes drastically wrong, so
please send me mail if there are any problems.
Have fun,
Anne LaVin
