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Adobe Kills FrameMaker for Mac
Feneric writes "As noted on FrameUsers.com, FrameMaker for the Mac was officially killed by Adobe. Of course, since one of the primary selling points of FrameMaker is its wonderfully solid cross-platform MS-Windows / Macintosh / Unix support, many are now wondering how long it'll now last for any platform."
This just goes to show how important open source is.
You have one company decided when, how, and why your using software. I just hope that the development community decides to make a new editor/format to replace PDF (insert any format you see appropriate) and make it better.
This way no company can say that you can no longer use this format. The community decides when they will stop using the format. Adobe has taken the decisions out of your hands.
In case you haven't been over to w3.org in a while, the HTML/XHTML standards are approaching the layout capabilities of FrameMaker. They're up against the Gecko engine, and the larger trend of dead-tree going out of style. Not that paper is dead, but you will probably skim electronic versions of anything before you want to carry around the paper version. There is additional energy cost associated with publishing on paper, and the cost of energy threatens to climb to 1973 levels. Electronic media reduces our dependance on fossil fuels for communication and information transfer.
I would guess this is news that Adobe FrameMaker is in "sunset mode." With Gimp coming up on PhotoShop's heels, the crops of Adobe bigots (the real value of the company) coming out of college may be in decline. Thus, Adobe may be in decline in a broader scope. Maybe they are going out quitely, and maybe they are circling the wagons. I'm sure there are hurt feelings regarding the iPhoto flap. The problem is: the only strategy Adobe has in fighting Apple is to lose.
Maybe Adobe is gearing up for a last-hurrah rewrite of the be-all end-all multimedia production suite? Then again, isn't multimedia so 1990s?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...