Palimpsest: Not-So-Creative Suite

Random thoughts about publishing

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Palimpsest

Not-So-Creative Suite

Monday, September 24, 2007 — posted by Sarah

According to Cherryleaf (via Cap-Studio), Adobe has announced the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

This suite will contain FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat 3D, and it will cost $1599 (a 56% saving over the full price). [Note: I do not know whether this is U.S. or international pricing.] Upgrades from any component of the suite would be less.

Some thoughts...

If you in need of several of the components, you'll obviously save money over licensing them individually, so a definite customer win there.

This is not good news for Quadralay/ePublisher Pro. Even if we assume that the FrameMaker/RoboHelp integration isn't as powerful as FrameMaker/ePublisher Pro, it's likely to be good enough for many.

A monolithic suite with cross-product integration (I assume) seems like the wrong direction in the current market. Our customers are asking for lightweight XML solutions. They are looking for ways to reduce their dependence on proprietary systems. We are currently working one project that's moving from Word to DITA with an assortment of editors and extensive customization of the DITA Open Toolkit for output. Another project is moving from unstructured FrameMaker/ePublisher Pro to structured FrameMaker/XML/XSL; output is various flavors of HTML and of course PDF/print. I just don't see the TC Suite as a contender for these customers.

We do, however, have another customer who is currently authoring in Word and RoboHelp and is deeply displeased with the quality of printed output and the amount of work required to produce online help. For them, the Suite provides the right set of tools; they do not need XML at this time. But how many similar workgroups are out there?

What do you think? Is the new TC Suite appealing to you?

Labels: FrameMaker, robohelp, TechComm Suite