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TOOLS OF THE TRADE

The Past: Where Did FrameMaker Come From?In April of this year, FrameMaker celebrates the 25th anniversary of its “birth,” in terms of the founding of Frame Technology. Although Adobe acquired FrameMaker in 1995 and has successfully managed product development for the past 15+ years, it seems like a good time to revisit the product’s birth and try to determine how and why this sensible publishing solution has remained a market leader for a quarter of a century.

Although Frame Technology had several company co-founders (Steve Kirsch, inventor of the optical mouse; David Murray, inventor of FrameMaker tables and much of the UI; and finance maven, Vickie Blakslee), I decided to interview just one of the founders: FrameMaker’s inventor Charles Corfield. Besides inventing FrameMaker, Charles has successfully ascended Mount Everest, won several 50-mile marathons, has his own Wikipedia page, and even has a courtyard at Cambridge University named after him. How did this unique individual invent a publishing solution with such lasting power? In Charles’s case, it did indeed take “rocket science” to get the process going.

“It all started while I was a student at Columbia in NYC in the early 1980s, working on a PhD in astrophysical fluid dynamics,” Charles recalls. Taking a hard look at the job

market for academic positions in astrophysics, Charles realized that the market had virtually dried up, due to shrinking science budgets, which had soared in the 1960s and 1970s.

Desiring a career that would involve challenging, research-oriented work, Charles realized that he would have to get his work financed; he did not want to rely on the limited resources of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded nearly all such research in the early 1980s. “It occurred to me, why not just sell a product directly to the tax-payers, and cut out the middleman (NSF)? My next problem was: ‘what on earth’ was I going to sell to the consumer?”

Seeking a business challenge where his strength as a mathematician could be leveraged, Charles canvassed several computer science department colleagues and discovered a need for an accessible, affordable, WYSIWYG documenta-tion tool. “The Macintosh had only recently appeared on the scene and was already influencing user expectations in terms of more ‘user-friendly’ authoring tools.” Even though Charles saw a rich, potential market beyond the limitations of early versions of MacWrite and MacDraw, he could not find an existing, affordable authoring solution that combined the strength of both products. “It became clear to me that a

FrameMaker Turns 25

By MAxWEll HoFFMANN | Member

Interview with Inventor Charles Corfield and an Update on New FrameMaker 10 Functionality

April 201112 intercom

embed text that resembled a miniature page into graphics.” Charles realized that this could be done by creating anchored frames in the text flow, or by handling unique page layout challenges with hand-drawn text frames that could paginate from one page to another. “I think it is possible that FrameMaker may have been the first desktop publishing product to fully meet the need of flexibly handling text in graphics for ‘challenging’ and high-volume technical publications,” Charles speculates.

Critical Early Influences on Product DevelopmentEarly FrameMaker product development had two key influences: (1) UNIx workstations with a multitasking oS for a hardware platform and (2) eCAD engineers as the first users, who had to create documentation that was thousands of pages long. Charles recalls an early visit with Henry McGilton, then the head of tech pubs at Sun Microsystems. At the time, Sun was publishing all of their manuals using troff and editing text with primitive tools like the “vi” editors, which were widely used in the UNIx world.

hybrid product of these two models would be tremendously useful to people writing documentation that required a lot of illustrations. Engineers immediately came to mind.”

Charles got wind of the Sun Microsystems Catalyst program, which loaned HW (Sun UNIx workstations) to developers who had promising software plans. He pitched his idea for an “industrial strength” WYSIWYG word processor that also did page layout and graphic editing to Sun. Soon, a $20,000 Sun workstation was being shipped to his apartment on West 122nd Street in New York City. “It was a much riskier neighborhood in those days,” Charles confesses. “I wonder how willing Sun would have been, had they realized that their hardware was essentially headed toward a college student’s apartment in a bad neighbor-hood?” The day after the UNIx-based workstation arrived, Charles headed to a corner bookstore to buy a book on C-programming (it was just regular “C” in those days, not “C++”) and a couple of days later, he began writing code.

An Authoring Solution Gap Needed To Be FilledCharles realized that engineers and technical authors who had to create high page-count documentation with lots of illustrations basically had a choice between two extreme solutions. There was code-driven, public domain software like troff and TeX, and then there was the hefty-priced alternative of Interleaf, which was very weak in page layout and managing anchored frames at that time.

“There was clearly a vacuum waiting to be filled with an accessible and ‘affordable’ solution,” Charles relates. He knew that a different model was required to meet the demanding needs of engineers and other technical authors with high-volume documentation needs. Unlike all MAC- or PC-based desktop publishing products of that time, FrameMaker was intended for >1,000 page docs even before it was born!

“I wanted to treat text and graphics symmetrically. In other words, be able to embed graphics into text, or to

Sample TROFF-coded entryThis is a part of a file coded for TROFF, the Unix typesetting program. A Perl fil-ter converts files structured like this to files that make sense to a WWW browser. .Cs “* Ulva” indica “Roth”.Pe\f2Ulva indica\f1Roth, 1806: 327--328(type locality: \*QEx India orientali\*U [India \f2fide\f1Martens, 1868: 60--61])..Ts Misapplied name:.Sy\f2Phycoseris gigantea\f1.---Martens, 1868: 60--61..IdIndia..QpNote:According toC. Agardh (1823 [1822--1823]: 407--408), who had seen a specimenin Roth’s herbarium, \f2Ulva indica\f1 Roth is referable to the plantthat has traditionally but erroneously been called\f2Ulva latissima\f1 Linnaeus (see \f2Ulva latissima\f1 auctorum).Martens (\f2l.c.\f1) used the name\f2Phycoseris gigantea\f1 to refer to Roth’s record..Qc

Figure 1. An early Mac desktop from the 1980s, as it appeared around the time of FrameMaker’s birth.

Figure 2. Sample TROFF-coded entry

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TOOLS OF THE TRADE

for hardcore, tech-comm projects. When working with multiple languages, any time savings in authoring or editing are magnified by the number of languages in which a project is delivered. lacking space for a full product review, I’ll list some of the biggest time and money savers that FrameMaker 10 offers. For more FM features, see our blog at Globalization Partners International, www.globalizationpartners.com.

Unstructured AuthoringStyle catalog management and find/replace format 4

overrides: Search for any paragraph, character string, or table which has formatting that does not match the catalog. You can use “replace” to eliminate the override. Paragraph catalog, character catalog, and the new table catalog all have an options button that allows you to (1) view only styles in use, (2) create custom lists of styles, or (3) delete unused styles. one-click deletion of unused styles is particularly useful for template building, when you may wish to only import certain strategic paragraph, character, and table styles from a source document.Suppress alerts, background colors, and drag-and-drop 4

editing: When upgrading older legacy documents from previous releases (or when opening multiple translated versions of older documents), it can be incredibly annoying to have multiple pop-up alerts that “fonts are missing” or that the “document was created with an older release.” Now, at appropriate times, you can eliminate these alerts, saving perhaps hundreds of hours in a high-production environment over the course of a year. Background text colors are a terrific enhancement to make conditional text tags more obvious. Everyone is used to drag-and-drop editing, from email tools to Microsoft Word. These enhancements make the product more accessible to an audience of new users.Automation through scripting: 4 Adobe ExtendScript allows users to bundle repetitive tasks into simple scripts. Scripts may be stored in a catalog and may be invoked manually or automatically.

Structured XML and DITA Authoring, CMS, and FrameServer

Standards support for DITA 1.2: 4 Work more effectively with DITA map-level elements, support for <keydef> and <topicset> and other enhancements allow easy importation of multiple referenced elements.Enhanced tag view: 4 Users may view elements as tags, which will now expand and collapse. This makes it possible to do significant structural editing in xMl or DITA without using the structure view window. A great convenience for users with a single screen or laptop environment.Filter by attribute: 4 Attributes can easily provide alternate display for conditional content. Show/Hide expressions can make content visible or hidden, based on element attributes.

“Henry held up the troff manual, thumbed through it and said ‘this is what we need.’ That became our goal.” Charles and the co-founders of the company realized that engineers on UNIx workstations needed something that “felt” as intuitive and accessible as the early MAC user interface.

Because UNIx was a powerful, multitasking operating system, the earliest working prototype of FrameMaker simultaneously handled page layout, word processing and graphics creation and editing. Don’t forget that this was still the mid-1980s, and all early desktop publishing solutions on the MAC or PC required separate software programs to do either page layout or word processing—not both at the same time.

Although more limited in some areas of functional-ity than Interleaf, the earliest releases of FrameMaker were priced at a fraction of the cost. As a result, the then UNIx-only product took off like wildfire, and was soon being ported to a variety of other UNIx workstations. Early in the life of the product, the core code for FrameMaker was made relatively “portable” so that it could eventually extend beyond UNIx-only hardware.

Fast forward a few years to a strategic visit with Boeing Computer Services. “They were designing the 777 at the time,” Charles relates. “If Boeing were to have printed out all of the documentation, it would have weighed more than the aircraft.” Boeing wanted to break the doc set up into “snippets,” perhaps pages that could be stored in a database. “If a mechanic scanned a barcode on a part of the aircraft, the database should pull in the relevant portion of documentation,” Charles continues. “The goal was to go to complete electronic delivery.”

This led to FrameMaker’s first development in structured documents and separating structure or content from formatting. “The logical choice at the time was SGMl, the ‘grand daddy’ of HTMl, xMl, and all other derivatives,” Charles remembers. The result was an early prototype of FrameBuilder, which became the foundation of the structured editing engine that FrameMaker uses today. Subsequent product development led to what may have been one of the earliest Web (HTMl) deliveries of product documentation. Charles also admits that structured authoring for xMl and DITA is one of the areas in which FrameMaker is most resilient, with features that continue to make FrameMaker a market leader.

The Present: FrameMaker 10 and Significant New FeaturesMoving away from Charles and product history, let’s briefly review the latest enhancements to FrameMaker 10, released 11 January 2011. like all documentation specialists in the translation industry, my team frequently works with FrameMaker because it is still the number-one choice for most of our high page-count customers.

There is still no affordable alternative to FrameMaker that has an equivalent number of time-saving features, reduced ramp-up time, and versatile, multi-device output

April 201114 intercom

for their strong loyalty to this product and their continued engagement with the product development team, to help us improve FrameMaker even further.”

Kapil is not surprised that FrameMaker has maintained its leading product status for a quarter of a century. “We at Adobe actively listen to our customers and continue to deliver on the ever-changing needs of our users.” According to Kapil, the changing needs of FrameMaker users are driven by dramatic shifts in technology, such as the move to xMl and DITA authoring, multi-device explosion (including mobile phones, tablets, etc.), and, of course, globalization. “Rest assured that Adobe will continue to invest heavily in FrameMaker going forward,” concludes Kapil, “so that we can continue to meet the ever-changing needs of technical writers and content creation groups.”

Whatever Happened to Charles Corfield?Speaking of track records, what about Charles Corfield, marathon runner, inventor, and CEo? Besides philan-thropic activity to ensure that more “Charles Corfields” come along, founding several companies, and serving on the boards of more companies than can be mentioned here, his latest venture is quite intriguing. Charles is CEo of nVoQ (pronounced “envoke,” formerly SandCherry), www.nvoq.com.

“our product enables speech recognition ‘in the cloud,’” Corfield enthused. “Basically, what we have done is replace typing with talking. Instead of using a desktop application for speech recognition, you simply log-in from anywhere and just start talking.” The speech recognition is in the cloud, where your transcribed “dictation” is stored for reuse on multiple devices. Sounds like a godsend for bloggers struggling with those “glass” keyboards.

Regarding track records, Corfield has demonstrated remarkable staying power in his own right. He recently won a 50-mile marathon (opening up with a 4-mile lead) at the Running from an Angel event in the lake Mead area, near las Vegas. Coincidentally, that was just three days before the release of FrameMaker 10. Now in his early 50s, Charles admits to a certain “impish delight” in winning marathons in which he outruns competitors half his age. Perhaps FrameMaker is chuckling somewhere inside its code, feeling just a little bit like Charles. i

MAxWEll HoFFMANN of Globalization Partners Interna-tional (GPI) (www.globalizationpartners.com) the translation services agency is an STC member of the Williamette Valley chapter in Oregon and a 23-year veteran user of FrameMaker. As employee number 66 at Frame Technology, he worked closely with Charles Corfield from 1988 to 1994. Recently designated an Adobe Community Professional in FrameMaker, Hoffmann leads a team of Adobe Technical Communication Suite experts providing training, consulting, and legacy content migration strategies into XML and DITA for GPI’s customers. You may follow Hoffmann and GPI team members on Twitter, @GPITranslates.

Attribute editor: 4 The new attribute editor makes it easier to edit attributes and can decrease the number of times you must use the structure view.Compare structured documents: 4 The document comparison utility now marks differences in element structure as well as plain text content.Smart Insert in XML files: 4 Multiple, nested sibling elements may be automatically inserted as a specified element is created, due to new controls in the EDD (Element Definition Document).Built-in CMS support: 4 FrameMaker 10 ships bundled with pre-built, no-cost connectors for EMC Documentum and Microsoft Sharepoint content management systems.

Other Miscellaneous EnhancementsAutomatic spell checker. 4

Repeat last operation (ideal for multi-step actions, like 4

applying conditional text tags).Setting a poster image for rich media imports and 4

extended video import formats.Importing PDF comments: comments imported from 4

PDF review now display more logically, and the author and time stamp are displayed when cursor is inserted in a comment. You may also select which reviewer’s comments you wish to display.Track Text Edits works across DITA Maps and Books. 4

Combined with RoboHelp, FrameMaker can now publish 4

to ePUBS or Adobe AIR community help forum format, with user-generated, moderated comments enabled.

The Future of FrameMaker and Adobe’s Commitment to the ProductAlthough FrameMaker had a brilliant birth, a remarkable group of founders and initial core-code developers, FrameMaker has been in Adobe’s hands for more than half of its life. So let’s turn to the current product manager to gain his insights into FrameMaker’s remarkable “staying power” and its future.

“FrameMaker continues to be the leading authoring tool for both unstructured and structured xMl content. It is also the lowest cost authoring and publishing solution for tech writers, due to its built-in publishing engine,” states Kapil Verma, product manager for FrameMaker. Kapil observes that FrameMaker also provides the lowest transition costs for organizations who wish to migrate from unstructured to DITA authoring. “This is because many content creators have already used FrameMaker for unstructured authoring; there is a dramatic reduction in training and ramp up time for a transition to FrameMaker-based DITA authoring.”

Regarding FrameMaker’s 25-year track record, Kapil says that it feels great to be the product manager of a product which has withstood the test of time and has enjoyed strong customer loyalty for 25 long years. “I want to thank all the FrameMaker users and our valued partners