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Review of Three Books on FrameMaker
First, let me admit that I am a FrameMaker aficionado. I love this product and have been using it for nearly 10 years. Prior to being a FrameMaker user, I worked with WordStar (just plain old WordStar, and eventually WordStar 2000), Texet, Xerox Ventura Publisher, Interleaf Technical Publishing Software, Xyvision Parlance Publisher, and Microsoft Word. None of them offered the power and flexibility that FrameMaker provides. With each of these products, there were hoops to jump through and nightmarish problems to solve. Now I can sleep at night. So, that said, let me tell you what I think about three books devoted to Adobe FrameMaker.
ADOBE FRAMEMAKER 7.0 CLASSROOM IN A BOOK
Adobe has designed Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 classroom in a book as a set of lessons comprising a tutorial for those just learning the tool. A CD-ROM with lessons comes with the book. The "Getting started" section states that the book is for those who are new to the product as well as those who have been using it for a while. This is a vague audience description (what does "a while" mean?). I have been using this book in my classes on FrameMaker since version 5.5. It is useful for people who are completely new to the product, but it has shortcomings for those who are even a bit experienced.
The book encourages you to start at the beginning and follow the lessons to the end. Each lesson consists of a sample lesson file to work on while following the book and a finished lesson file, so you can see how the project is supposed to look when you are done. When you start a new lesson, you use a new lesson file. In that way, you always begin with a stable file that has not inherited any mistakes from the previous lesson. The book has plenty of white space in the margins for making notes. Screen shots highlight the steps being performed and help to keep you on track.
The book is divided into two parts: "Adobe FrameMaker 7.0" (everything in "traditional" FrameMaker) and "Structured FrameMaker" (the features used to implement XML and SGML).
Part One, three-quarters of the book, contains an introduction followed by 15...