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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."

1 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. The X Windows System by joto · · Score: 5, Informative
    One of the great things about the X Window System is that it is network transparent. It would be stupid to ditch framemaker, simply because you can't run it locally on linux. Have a dedicated machine (SGI/Sun/whatever) simply for running framemaker, and let your users run it remotely. Problem solved, money saved ;-)

    Alternately, use Citrix Metaframe, and run framemaker on a windows server. That would probably be more expensive, less convenient, and so on. But if you need users to access other windows applications as well, it is a whole lot better than giving each user two machines, and having you administer them both.