Interesting times...
posted by Sarah
First, some bad news. I have decided to postpone release of our structured FrameMaker title. This decision was due to several factors, including the following:

• Disappointing sales of the unstructured FrameMaker 8 book. Frankly, based on the level of interest shown before the book was released, we expected a lot more sales at this point.
• Resource allocation. I need the people who were working on the book to focus on client projects. I suppose this is a good problem to have.
• Historically, FrameMaker has been on an 18-24 month release cycle. We're about a year into FrameMaker 8 already, which means we're looking at a lifespan of 6-12 months for this next book. And that's if we made it available TODAY. And the content is not ready.

We have a similar problem with our FrameMaker training workbooks. Our original plan was to update the unstructured book content, then the structured book, and then tackle the workbooks. Thus far, we haven't touched the workbooks to make the needed version 8 updates.

So we've decided to try something different, and that brings us to what I hope is the good news part of this post.

Today, we are launching wiki.scriptorium.com. Our new wiki currently includes the training content from our FM 101 (unstructured/accelerated introduction) and FM 201 (structured/introduction to authoring). We will also add the content of our other three FrameMaker workbooks as soon as possible. Our workbook content is for FrameMaker version 7, which means that about 90 percent of it is accurate for version 8.

As of today, you have access to free FrameMaker tutorial content. The sample files needed to complete the exercises are included on the wiki. Furthermore, we have licensed the content under a Creative Commons license, which means that you can reuse and repurpose the content as long as you provide attribution.

We hope that you will consider registering on the wiki and contributing to the needed updates.

Meanwhile, we will continue to offer live, web-based training on FrameMaker. You can also purchase PDF and printed versions of the workbooks from our store. The commercial versions have much nicer formatting than the wiki content does. For more details about the difference between the commercial and the wiki versions, see the front page of the wiki.

I know that some of you have been looking forward to getting the structured FrameMaker book, and I apologize to you for this change in plans. I hope that you'll find the wiki option a worthwhile substitute for the time being.

We are also looking at releasing some of the structured content (especially the DITA-specific information) as a stand-alone technical brief, but I don't want to commit to that approach at this point.

Labels: business, FrameMaker

3:10 PM Permalink |