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FrameMaker 8.0 Product Review (continued)What's in this article:
Working with other file typesWord 2007 import
Should you take advantage of Word 2007 and create content that contains UNICODE characters consider FrameMaker 8.0 as a solution. Importing any UNICODE content (or creating it from scratch) is something that can be done with the new release. Which brings us to the next topic. UNICODE support
The bad news is that even now the support is not there for right to left languages. However, for content that is in Russian, Greek or even Hindi you can work right in FrameMaker. It is not just typing either. Dialogues also support the UNICODE character set.
If you are in need of UNICODE support, then the upgrade is worth the cost for that one feature alone. Universal 3D and FlashSupport for universal 3D and Flash file import is now included. This allows either of the two file types to be imported and, upon conversion to PDF, be supported in the Acrobat environment. By doing so, Adobe has created a stronger bond between the Acrobat and the FrameMaker software. Models created in 3D drawing tools can be configured to support features allowing the model to be rotated, zoomed and even lit up from a variety of angles. Flash animations can be embedded and full activity retained in the final PDF. Acrobat provides the fully-featured Flash and 3D support, but don’t plan to activate any of the 3D or Flash features in FrameMaker. Instead, you need to save the file to a PDF first. Finally, some of the people I’ve talked to find the feature to be nice. Really nice. But they don’t expect it to be used in their documentation simply because they don’t do 3D and Flash work or they don’t have the time and the budget to update content. Most users agree that they would like to incorporate these features, so the hope is that companies catch on. This really does change the way that people can work with a PDF document and should be investigated. For those who do use Flash or 3D models, this may be worth the upgrade. |
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If you happen to be one of the people who imports content from Word 2007 then the cost of the upgrade may be worth it for this alone. Of course, you can also open the file in Word and save it to an older Word version. Then the older format Word file can be opened in a legacy version of FrameMaker.
Finally! Updated dialogues use UNICODE characters in the Find/Change dialogue. New dictionaries are included with support for UNICODE. You can even create a PDF where all your headings are written in a specific language and properly convert to bookmarks.
