Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Adobe Frame Maker Equivalent for Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the yet-another-niche-to-capture dept.

Sim asks: "I currently work for a company which has used Frame Maker on SGI/IRIX systems for almost 10 years (meaning they have roughly 10 years worth of FM documents/reports/technical narratives/etc). It appeared that there would be a clean sweep of old SGI's out the door in favor of PC's running Linux, until a very nasty glitch got in the way: Adobe discontinued it's work on a Linux version of Frame Maker -- leaving the project in a beta format. The unstable format of the current Frame Maker version makes putting it into a production environment nearly impossible. I was hoping someone out there might know of a really powerful Frame Maker substitute."

"This substitute would need to have the following features:

  • 'user friendly' GUI
  • should be able to handle document management (with document cross refrencing links)
  • graphics support
  • import tables/create table
  • handle multiple template styles (a style manager for creating templates would be wonderful)
  • should be able to import/open .DOC formats as well as export/save to .DOC
  • STABILITY
I've done some research on Star Office, as well as programs provided with a standard Red Hat install (koffice), both suites appear to be fairly unstable, and fairly buggy still. I've also researched LyX, but LyX doesn't have all the features I'm looking for. I'm open to any suggestions of a suitable Frame Maker substitute. I am willing to pay for the software -- just because I'd like it to run on Linux doesn't mean I expect it to be free."

2 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Re:StarOffice 6 by Yarn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The feature set and approach to document formatting suits many types of technical documents far better than typical "word processors"

    In the unix world this niche has been filled by TeX for longer than I can remember. It's not that hard to use, I taught myself in about 3 days.

    For windows, http://www.miktex.org/
    For Linux, your distro will probably have tetex/latex.

    --
    -Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
  2. X app on the server by gruntvald · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wouldn't it be feasible to put it on a big IRIX box on the server, and run it via X on the local boxen ? I thought X was the big advantage of *nix based systems, so you didn't *have* to load every app locally - just once, on a centrally maintained box.