Comments for Leximation

Comment on Custom scripting in the DITA-FMx book-build process by Yves Barbion

Yves Barbion — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:59:06 +0000

This is really great stuff! I have just tested this with DITA-FMx 1.1.16 in FrameMaker 11 and it works (of course it does, because it’s a Leximation product ;-). I can imagine using this script for all types of content which need background shading (no more tables!).
The only minor issue I see is when I set @status=changed on a section which consists of multiple paragraphs. Background shading is applied to each individual paragraph, but not on the complete section as a whole, but I guess that’s just the way in which background shading currently works in Fm?

Comment on Have UI designers forgotten about usability? by saprentice

saprentice — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:03:17 +0000

Yves .. I’d take an ugly but functional “UI” any day over a beautiful but useless “DI”!
Cheers!

Comment on Have UI designers forgotten about usability? by saprentice

saprentice — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:00:46 +0000

Klaus .. you are right. The smaller companies do generally focus on higher quality and simpler design. At some point it seems that as a software company “grows up” they forget about who their customers really are and what those people really do. Sad but true.

Comment on Have UI designers forgotten about usability? by Klaus Daube

Klaus Daube — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:13:00 +0000

Scott, this blogpost is balsam to my soul! I’m really thinking that at least in one big company there are far to many designers at work…
Concerning the bug fixing issue: it’s my impressen that small companies or even share-ware-producers follow this principle. I use programs which are updated only for the adaptation to a new OS – they just work as intended.

Comment on Have UI designers forgotten about usability? by saprentice

saprentice — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 22:30:07 +0000

Nice referenced article Arnis! Simple *is* hard.

Comment on Have UI designers forgotten about usability? by Arnis Gubins

Arnis Gubins — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 03:47:53 +0000

As a segue from my previous comment, the following article would be extremely beneficial for the cool & trendy UI designers to read and understand.

The Complexity of Simplicity @ http://uxmag.com/articles/the-complexity-of-simplicity

Comment on Have UI designers forgotten about usability? by Arnis Gubins

Arnis Gubins — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 03:20:45 +0000

Spot on Scott!

bad UI = bad UX

It would really help if developers ate their own dogfood and produced a complete & up-to-date “product” setting the gold standard for how the tool(s) should be used (instead of using tried & true versions 3-4 releases back!).

For some companies, however, it sadly seems like Mr. Murphy in Marketing has forbidden the KISS rule to be applied.

Comment on Have UI designers forgotten about usability? by Yves Barbion

Yves Barbion — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:13:04 +0000

I fully agree, Scott. After all, we’re talking about a *U*I, not a *D*I (as in “Designer Interface”), aren’t we? In this respect, template development is like software development: yes, the result should look nice and professional, but above all, it should just *work*.

Comment on FrameMaker 11 Review: XML and Structured Authoring by Adobe Product-opedia « TechComm Central by Adobe

Adobe Product-opedia « TechComm Central by Adobe — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:35:24 +0000

[...] A detailed review of FrameMaker 11 XML features, by Scott Prentice of Leximation is here [...]

Comment on Apple iBooks Author and Adobe FrameMaker? by Chris S Markham

Chris S Markham — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 16:22:51 +0000

A small if belated correction is due.

“…drove Frame Technology to the edge of bankruptcy.”

Hyperbole to make a point, perhaps, but untrue. I was there pre-IPO until Adobe first killed then revived FM. Frame Technology was healthy when sold to Adobe for half a $billion. Word was never seen as a competitor to FM. FM was and is still the long document champ, though 20 years later MSW is still making inroads.
That said, as pretty much the sole tool in this space, FM has been pressed to Swiss Army Knife service. All input and output formats are desired. Witness this great blog post. In this particular case we might suggest that IBA would have more import formats as surely Apple knows that repurposing existing content is where the bulk of the iBooks library is going to come from. XML import would be a great start; XSL transforms are much easier bridges to build than proprietary format (MIF not withstanding) filters. Thanks ‘saprentice’ and Leximation for putting out the fruits of your early research; you’ve saved me a lot of time 9 months later.

Lastly, I should say that wishing for FM to store in anything but native .fm format is a pipe-dream. I’ve been in the core source code. The formatter is brilliant, despite all its shortcomings (25 years!) but could not survive such a rewrite. If I might wax nostalgic a little longer, I’d relate that Adobe’s effort to rewrite Aldus PageMaker code into what became InDesign took 5 years and a lot of $millions. That isn’t going to ever happen again.