Core Dump

I ordered from Amazon.ca, early in December, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band: Live in Barcelona (DVD). It's very good. You get two discs, the second featuring bonus tracks. I played it over and over trying to figure out why I couldn't access the bonus material on disc 2. I assumed that I was not pressing the right menu button on my Bose 3-2-1 Home Theatre remote (or the remote batteries were dying prematurely), and didn't bother with it for a while.

A few days later, I get an Amazon.ca e-mail announcing that Sony Music (U.S.) will exchange defective disc 2. The messages directs customers to a New Jersey number, a toll-free number, and the Springsteen Web site. The Web site echoes the news about disc 2, as does the Sony Music site. Trouble is that the toll-free number is not accessible from 416/905 area codes. Sony Music Canada Web site says nothing about it. Amazon puts the onus on Sony Music. After you Alphonse. So, how does a GTA customer get an exchange?

Short of taking up residence in New Jersey (or footing a long-distance phone call during business hours), I finally get time to contact Sony Music Canada in Toronto. It wasn't easy. Their Web site is mute about the busted DVD and it was frustrating finding a customer support contact. A Canada 411 search got me the Sony HQ. After explaining in detail the situation (and my frustration) to the receptionist, I am transferred to the person who can arrange an exchange for disc 2. Her voice mail announces she is on vacation 'till January 9th (the day I call is December 17). Not impressed.

By now all customers in New Jersey, and likely the remainder of the U.S., are enjoying Springsteen bonus tracks. If I recall correctly, Amazon.ca is merely an electronic front for mega-retailer Amazon (U.S.). Our southern neighbours (neighbors) don't mind selling foreigners stuff, but don't expect any customer service.

Anyway, Live in Barcelona was recorded during 2002 at the start of the mega-tour which included Toronto in fall of that year, and this past September (when I saw the concert at Skydome). A great Springsteen spectacle! The Spanish crowd seemed especially lively, and responsive. The Boss uttered a few Espanola words to the devoted masses. The venue seemed pretty steamy: humidity must've been high as the Band (mostly The Boss) were soaked. Hot stuff.

I recommend the DVD. I cannot recommend getting it from Amazon. Sony Music could use some customer service awareness, but I won't hold my breath. I must wait for the local Sony lady to return from her lengthy vacation to get my WORKING disc 2.

Happy New Year!

John Perry Barlow now has a blog. Barlow is an interesting character. He is a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a rancher, and a lyricist for String Cheese Incident and the Grateful Dead. This is one blog I'll be reading regularly.

How long was that old technical review out there wandering in the R&D ether? There is something spooky and elusive that some Subject Matter Experts (SME) in software development have trouble honouring something called -- wait for it -- a document review DEADLINE. The terminus in an even more deadly concept: the **edit/review process**. Scary! Actually, the doc-review deadline is not taken too seriously. Not too many SMEs are worried. After all, what's the big deal? Just do a find and replace.

Don't get me started ...

Where I toil for a living, we have a tortured legacy doc-review and approval system. For doc & content management, we use MS Visual Source Safe. Works really well. The build system takes care of compiling Help whether via RoboHelp (such as WinHelp 2000, plain HTML, or CHM) or via WebWorks (WW). Writers check docs into a repository similar to developers checking in their code. Alas, the edit/review & approval system relies on more basic mechanisms to encourage and manage SME compliance such as forms, printed copy (all comments archived), and ... wait for it ... DEADLINES. Oh! Shakin' in my boots.

Some products have WinHelp with source files based in Word, compiled with RoboHelp while the manual is based in FrameMaker (FM), others are single-sourced (really a merging of manual and online content) in FM and transformed to either WinHelp or plain HTML by WW. All manuals share common front matter, copyright/trademark sections, certain chapters/appendixes, and advanced installation sections. Some common sections are heavily conditioned (product-specific); they can be complicated and fragile. Writers own common sections (I own many, not to mention templates and supporting style guides). The dual-source stuff (Word/Frame) requires parallel info development. Fortunately, we have merged most Word-based Help with Frame-based manuals.

A few years ago (at the peak of the technical writer head count), things got out of control. Several layers of peer review usually precede technical reviews. The end goal (as always) was a fast, efficient, painless final R&D review/approval. Each lead writer disseminated the final layer of copy edits to fellow writers (nearly everyone had to review the manuals of other writers). R&D technical reviews got delayed, as usual. Writers were already overwhelmed with their own ongoing doc development. There used to be an independent editing team in another Ontario office, but they are "no longer with us". Early reviews also went to Technical Support and Marketing. QA was struggling during the development cycle with their processes; as a result they were unable to respond to document reviews until the 11th hour. QA reviewers got delayed, as expected. Slowly, some peer/departmental reviews filtered back to lead writers. Each reviewer commented erratically on the common material without seeing the comments of other reviewers; some commented on material that had nothing to do with their particular expertise. SMEs did not confer with each other when confronted with technical discrepancies in the software that were revealed in the documentation. One expert says this about a particular blurb: "take it out", while another says: "put it in". Writers felt like a ball in tennis match, or a puppet on a string. Word-based material was a problem since many writers didn't (sometimes due to time constraints) organize the project docs in a rational way and neglected to print them in a manner easy for reviewers to handle. For example, they left Robo-generated per topic page breaks in place resulting in one topic per page, or there were no page numbers at all for a stack potentially 1-2 inches thick. "What's This" topics wound up a couple of lines or more stranded at the top of dozens of pages. Common material was not identified or segregated for any particular reviewer/editor meaning some wound up reviewing the same content many times. Naturally, technical reviewers were annoyed about reading common material (not identified as such) that was repeated for products with dual source documentation, and between topics shared across products. Some writers sent printouts of single-sourced material with ALL conditions (with varying indicator colors/features) set to show, thereby obscuring (when printed from a B/W printer) what was HelpOnly, ManualOnly, HTMLOnly, etc., etc. Some writers sent a printout for each condition. Some reviewers got both variations.

The myriad of reviews/edits trickled back to writers at different points in time, from different departments, and from various peers. You could spend days implementing technical input from these sources, then thinking you were done, distribute the final review/approval only to find some delinquent reviewer return critical comments AFTERWARD. Several writers (me included) nearly went insane trying to resolve the overlapping comments on common sections. Some writers dumped review comments from their reviewers on senior writers responsible for common material. The mistake was that specific common material should have sent by OWNERS of the common material ONLY to SMEs with that particular technical expertise, not to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet in R&D with a red pen and an attitude. To make matters worse, some peer reviewers were not very good at editing (management can be pretty blind to differential writer skills), were unfamiliar with subject matter, or ignored review guidelines (some reviews are intentionally "light", focusing on word smithy only, not technical accuracy or formatting). Basically, a mess resulted. Anal-retentive reviewers wasted time commenting on funky pagination since some writer might neglect to regenerate a chapter TOC (or main TOC) or insert revised pages into an existing printout. Fussing about page numbering (during early stages) is a quick out for SMEs unwilling or unable to offer input on technical accuracy.

The end result of this: TOTAL CHAOS!

The system, as it stands now, functions more smoothly, but has slid into a new kind of obscurity since our numbers have declined dramatically due to the dot-bust. Approval (as in an R&D Director signature) is assumed, as they rarely use the forms attached to final reviews. My tactic is to say "if I don't hear from you by this date, or see an approval signature, your final approval is assumed ... the material will be published without amendments". Sometimes I get a response, often NOT.

Don't get me started ...

In a word, wow!

I don't think that I have ever seen a movie this long that went by that quickly. About the only criticism I have is that I wish he'd ended the movie with the coronation of the king, rather than tacking on three more rather sappy endings, one after the other.

There's absolutely no doubt that Jackson's Lord of the Rings is the best sciene ficiton or fantasy film ever made. It's probably the best adaptation of a work of sf ever. I've seen some carping by die hard Tolkein fans about liberties that Jackson took with the story, but realistically, I don't think it's possible to do it any better than Jackson did.

It's also clear that the state of the art in film has reached the point where it's possible to film anything convincingly, given enough imagination and a decent sfx budget. I've read that Jackson's next project will be a remake of King Kong, something that strikes me as a bit sad, when there are so many great works of sf begging to be filmed. How about Larry Niven's Ringworld, or Heinlein's Have Space Suit, Will Travel or Glory Road? Or the one that's highest on my personal wish list, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.

A New York man was trapped in his apartment, buried up to his neck, for two days -- in books. Guess I better check the bracing on the bookshelf next to me.

The New York Times (free registration required) has an interesting article on plans for a new generation of very large telescopes, ranging in size from 20 to100 metres in diameter. I've seen discussions of OWL (the 100 metre telescope) before, but not the others. The hope is to get at least a 30 metre scope built to coincide with the launch of the next space telescope in 2011.

It seems hard to believe, but pet fish are now banned from flying as terrorist suspects, or possibly weapons. I can just see the poor girl in this story standing up in a crowded airplane and yelling "Hands up everyone, I have a Beta!"

I have said more than once in the past that I think that the US is exhibiting signs of collective insanity, and this story is another example of why.

I can still remember the thrill of my first game of Doom. I've played quite a few games since then, but only a couple have come close to the rush that Doom gave me. Masters of Doom explores the lives of the two main developers of that game, John Carmack and John Romero, and the history of id software, the company that they founded, and which gave us the hits Doom, Quake (and Commander Keen too).

The author, David Kushner, focuses mainly on the personalities of Carmack and Romero and the people around them, rather than getting heavily into the technology. It's pretty clear that the Carmack and Romero made an almost ideal pair of game developers, at least at first, with Carmack's skill at developing state-of-the-art game engines and Romero's sense of what made a thrilling game. Later, their personalities clashed, eventually leading Romero to start his ill-fated venture, Ion Storm. It's interesting to see just how tempestous the development of these games was. It's a compelling story and if you're into gaming, definitely worth the time.

Aliens Cause Global Warming is the provocative title of a lecture given by novelist Michael Crichton at Caltech in January. Actually, his thesis isn't really that aliens cause global warming, but rather a belief in aliens, or a belief in global warming might be linked. It's an interesting lecture and well worth reading. One brief quote: "There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't
science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."

NASA has been sued by three Yemeni men for trespassing on Mars. The men claim that they inherited the red planet from their ancestors 3,000 years ago and can provide the documents to prove it.

I thought about putting this under the "Crazy Years" banner, but frivoulous lawsuits are a dime a dozen, apparently even in Yemen. Now, if they win ....

Another in a continuing series of posts attempting to show that we are indeed living in what Robert A Heinlein called "The Crazy Years".

The World Information Summit was held in Geneva a week ago. The keynote speaker was Robert Mugabe.

Does this not stike you as more than a little bit strange?

The BBC is reporting that Australian researchers have found that the second law of thermodynamics may not apply at very small distances or very short time scales. (For those of you who have forgotten your grade 9 physics, the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy always increases in a closed system.) If true, this has profound implications for nanotechnology, as it means that nanomachines may not run properly; essentially, they might run backwards.

I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen last night. All the reviews I've seen of this movie have been in the one star range, but it wasn't that bad. (The Internet Movie Database rates it as 5.5, I'd say 6 or 6.5.) Maybe it's just that I wasn't expecting that much, but I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the second Tomb Raider movie, for example. Admittedly, the plot was completely absurd, but it usually is in movies of this type, and the special effects were quite decent. And it was very tongue-in-cheek, something I suspect that many of the critics missed.

I'm almost tempted to start a new blog, just for this, but anyway ....

In his Future History series, Robert Heinlein had a period around the end of the 20th century that he called "The Crazy Years". His Future History stories were punctuated with brief headlines from newspaper stories of this period. They read like something out of today's headlines.

So I'm occasionally going to start posting links to stories from the news that Heinlein could have used.

The first one is about a woman in Minnesota who is facing a jail term for providing her 13 year-old son, who was having sex with his 15 year-old girlfiend, with a box of condoms. Read it and weep. (You may get a popup asking for some information about you before you can read the story - nothing says you have to provide your real info.)

A week ago I posted about my cataract surgery. Since then, my distance vision has got a bit worse and my closeup vision has improved. My eyeglasses prescription has dropped from about 19.5 to about -4. I got new, thin, glasses today and my distance vision is nice and crisp. On the down side, I have to take them off to read, so perhaps a pair of bifocals is in my future, but that will have to wait until after my left eye is done next year.

The schemas used in Microsoft Office 2003 along with documentation are available on Microsoft's web site.

Now I'm waiting to see how long it takes somebody to come with a way of using XML to exchange MS Word files with FrameMaker. (Yes, I know there's an import filter, but it's not that good.

Bert Rutan, the leading contender for the X-Prize, celebrated the centennary of flight yesterday with a supersonic, rocket-powered test flight of his Spaceship One. I was thinking about this the other day and wondered if he'd make a try for the prize on the Wright anniversary. This was just a test flight, but it shows he's well on the way.

This posting was contributed by Michael Bryans, who will soon become a co-author on this blog.

"Avast ye, Cap'n Skull and Cross, ye scurvy dogs! Ye canna best the power of software! Ye'll be scuppered afore the sun is past the yard arm."

Arrr ...

I am entertained, as always, by legacy documentation. Recently, R&D wanted a 6-10 year old appendix resuscitated. It describes an old window manager for an X Window product. Since development halted for the particular application in the mid-90s, R&D long ago opted to remove mention of it from the manuals, leaving users with only the vintage Help (original content updated to current Help systems).

I made some minor updates to the scripting language for the application's configuration-initialization, but otherwise the task involved porting the former manual-appendix into a current template, apply current styles, and make it look like a white/technical paper. Otherwise, I made only very minor rewriting and structural changes. It's destined to be accessible to customers via our Web site.

Suddenly , I stumbled upon some murderous, renegade symbolism:
====================================================
The System menu includes standard functions that let you raise a window, circulate a window up and down, refresh the display, and kill a client.

NOTE: When you choose the Kill Client command,
the pointer changes to a skull and crossbones.
You can exit an application by choosing this
command, moving the pointer to the application
window, and then clicking the left mouse button.
====================================================

As mentioned, the UI is carved in stone and ancient, and "Kill" is a standard UNIX term (thanks for reminding me, Keith).

Arrrr...

Don't think I'm going to be changing this wording ; it DOES accurately describe the interface and functionality. What if that ditty is translated into other languages; fortunately, I don't think it has been, or will be. Dunno what warm/fuzzy feelings that skull and crossbones might illicit in other cultures.

I always wanted to kill a client anyway ... alas, with the click of a button.

// posted by Keith, on (permanent link): 12:28 PM (0) comments

Crypto-Gram is a free monthly e-mail newsletter on general and computer security from Bruce Schneier (author of Secrets and Lies and Applied Cryptography, inventor of Blowfish and Twofish, CTO and founder of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., general crypto pundit and occasional crypto curmudgeon).

Recent issues have had articles on the Blaster worm and the August blackout, airplane hackers, hats in banks, and many other security-related topics. Interesting stuff.

The Chicago Manual of Style is one of those books that belong on every technical writer's reference shelf. It's full of exhaustive lists of rules for punctuation, style, and grammar. I don't refer to it that often, and it's not oriented to the type of writing I do (software documentation), but it's proven invaluable as the court of last resort in resolving problems.

But even a book as hefty as the CMS can't cover everything. The CMS web site has an excellent FAQ that covers a lot of questions that never made it into the book. The FAQ answers are more informal than the manual itself and often exhibit a droll sense of humour.

Now, if only the CMS was available on CD-ROM or in a searchable online format.

NASA is in the early design stages for a nuclear-powered spacecraft that would explore the moons of Jupiter. Unlike other spacecraft, like Galileo and Cassini, which have carried a radioisotope thermal generator, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter would carry a small nuclear reactor. This would give the spacecraft much more power for propulsion and instruments. All I can say is it's about time.

We all know some ugly buildings and places. This site dissects them, in biting, withering prose. I particularly liked the description of Toronto's new Ontario College of Art and Design building. In part "This exercise in hyper-entropic avant garde faggotry is so cutting edge that it is already out of date. The only question: which of the two conjoined buildings is more cruelly ridiculous?"

You can send in your (favourite) places for inclusion.

This is the title of a New York Times article that explores the role that PowerPoint might have played in the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. NASA engineers used a badly designed PowerPoint slide to explain the data about impacts on the shuttle's thermal protection system; data that was presented so badly that no one could understand the implications.

The article refers to Edward Tufte's essay "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" in which he discusses how PowerPoint "usually weakens verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupts statistical analysis".

To add insult to injury, this page presents the main points of Tufte's essay as a PowerPoint presentation.

The powers of ten zoom has been around for a while, at least since an NFB short back in the 60s. This implementation is a really good Java applet that zooms in from well outside the galaxy to the level of quarks. Neat suff.

FrameScript 3 will be available on Monday, December 15th. I'll have to put through a purchase requisition as soon as I return to work on Monday. I mentioned here a while back, that this release adds a lot of new and interesting functionality. I'm looking forward to seeing what some of the FrameScript wizards out there can do with it -- with the ability to create custom dialog boxes, it could go a long way to fixing some of FrameMaker's more egregious interface issues.

As if anybody needed one by now, here's another reason not to use Internet Explorer. It's possible to craft a URL to redirect IE to a web site and spoof the address so that you can't tell that it's redirected. So that web page that you think belongs to your bank could belong to a hacker stealing your private financial data and you'd never know, unless you use a real web browser like Mozilla.

Here's a page that will show you an example.

Slashdot has published a review of Robert Heinlein's first novel, For Us, The Living. I have the book but haven't read it yet, but from what I've read about it, the review is probably pretty accurate. The CBC also has a feature on the book, with (of course) a Canadian slant.

I hope you got your flu shot, because if you live in the US and you haven't you may be out of luck by now. According to this article in Slate, there isn't enough flu vaccine to go around. Because last year's flu season was so mild, this year drug companies didn't produce as much. And the A Fujian strain that's going around isn't covered by the vaccine.

At least in Ontario, the governent gives out free flu shots and has just bought half a million more, so it's not too late here. I've had mine, have you had yours?

I had cataract surgery yesterday on my right eye. Last year, I noticed that my vision was getting fuzzy, and an examination found a cataract. Since I am extremely nearsighted anyway, this was not good. For the last few months I've been stumbling around in a blur. Yesterday, they fixed it.

I don't remmember anything about the surgery because I was under general anesthetic, because my eyeballs wander, not a good thing to have to deal with when you want to stick sharp objects in my eye. No problems with anesthetic at all, I was out and awake again with no nausea and only a little grogginess - most of which was from having to fast for 16 hours. I came home with a patch and a plastic guard over my eye.

I took the patch off this morning (the doctor said I cuuld remove it last night, but things might be blurry then) and lo and behold I can see -- clearly, crisply, sharply. (At least as sharp as you can see with retinas that are limited to 20/70.) Everything in near to middle distance (18" to about 6 feet) is dead crisp. Distance is a tiny bit fuzzy, but still clearer than what I was seeing with my glasses. And it will probably get better as it can take a while for things to stabilize - my eye will be swollen for a while because of the incision.

So I may need glasses, possibly either for reading (fine print seems to be an issue right now) or for distance, but if I do they'll be normal glasses and I could probably get by without them if need be. Compared to the coke-bottle bottom lenses I've had to wear all my life, that will be a great relief. Right now I'm sitting at my screen and I can read it clearly from 18" away. No more having to hunch over the keyboard.

Assuming that I don't develop any complications (infection, detached retina), they'll do the other eye in about three months. In the meantine, I'll be operating with one eye, but since my right eye is so much better than my left that's not an issue - I'll just have to be careful turning left as everything to the left of me is blurry.

So to say I'm happy is an understatement.

I'm a regular reader of Jerry Pournelle's "View from Chaos Manor" daybook (blog, really, though he's been doing it long before blogs were developed), see the link on the side bar. As well as being a best-selling science fiction author, he's been a long-time computer columnist for Byte Magazine. In the sf world, he's got a reputation for being a bit of curmugeon, but I figure he's earned the right.

I used to think his political views were pretty right-wing, but over the last few years I've come to realize that, while he's more conservative than me in some areas, he has a really strong belief in the fundamental rights of individuals, rights that are clearly being trampled on in the United States these days.

Last year, Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen was changing planes in the US on a return flight to Canada. He was stopped by US authorities, and deported, not back to Canada (although he held a valid Canadian passport), but to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured. This isn't the only such case recently either.

I'm going to quote a brief excerpt from Pournelle's comments:

"The right to know the charges against you and to be confronted with your accusers was the right that free Englishmen demanded against the King, and is the essence of what we thought liberty and freedom was about. Or so I would have said, but I'm just an old scholar and I guess I don't understand modern security needs.

But the fact is that since 911 the other guy hasn't been able do much. But what we have done to ourselves more than makes up for his helplessness. And we continue to do it to ourselves.

There are no state secrets worth keeping at these prices. None. We didn't even do this during the Cold War when there were enormous enemy armies ready to race to the Rhine, and hundreds and later thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at us, and others that could have been smuggled in. The USSR had the bomb. But we didn't throw Judith Coplon into solitary and torture her."

To read his full comments, and the email thread that prompted them, click here and scroll down a bit.

I should also note that the Canadian government hasn't been blameless either, and a bit of spine would be nice when it comes to dealing with the rights of Canadian citizens and foreign governments.

For anyone considering an alternative to Microsoft Office, Newsforge.com has a review of Sun's StarOffice 7. The author, Bruce Byfield, a is technical writer whose postings in mailing lists give me reason to trust his mostly favourable opinion of the suite. One of the things I like about this review is his explanation of the difference between the free Open Office suite and Sun's inexpensive, licensed version.

I have installed Open Office but haven't had much of a chance to use it. So far, I like what I've seen. If you're frustrated by the many bugs and issues with Microsoft Word, but can't afford Adobe FrameMaker, Open Office merits a good hard look.

Although he's not very prolific, John Varley one of the best sf authors, and he now has an official web site. As well as the usual biography and bibliography, there's one story online (the short but grim The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged) and section called The Varley Yarns, which has a large number of short articles.

I'm not a huge Rolling Stones fan; I saw them once livfe and wasn't really impressed (1977, not a good period for them), and I have a few of their classics on CD. But I am impressed with their new DVD set, Four Flicks.

There are four DVDs, three of concerts (theatre, arena, and stadium shows), and a tour documentary with bonus material. It's a slick package and has some neat extras, like a Backstage Pass mode that shows you alternative clips of what's going on backstage as the songs are playing. Video and sound quality are excellent and the performances are generally solid and occasionally outstanding. The Stones have been around for a long time and they know how to put on a show. The track selection is good too, a nice mix of classics and more obscure material, with only a few repeats between shows.

This will get quite a bit of play over the holidays.

If anyone has a handle on the future, it's Arthur C. Clarke. After all he invented the concept of the geosynchronous communication satellite, and HAL, who although is fictional, is one of the central metaphors for computers. OneWold South Asia has a lengthy interview with Clarke, mostly focusing on the future of information and communications technologies.

I'm pleased to note that he now figures the odds of humanity surviving extinction are now about 70 percent, up from the 50 percent he predicted a number of years ago. Well worth the read.

I suppose it makes sense. Monks used to illuminate manuscripts. Now they recycle laser printer cartridges. This is not intended as an endorsement; I just thought it was an interesting sign of the times.

No, it's not the big Oxford English Dictionary - that one is available online as a subscription service, but it's ridiculously overpriced. It's the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, which I believe is out of print in hardcopy form. It's a nice alternative to the US Merriam-Webster online dictionary. I do wish the Gage Canadian dictionary was available online.

Maybe George W. Bush will do something right, finally. The National Review (and other sources) reports that Bush may propose an ambitious new space program that will result in the U.S. returning to the Moon and possibly eventually undertaking a mission to Mars. A return to the Moon would offer far more benefit than the current major program, the International Space Station, but let's hope that if the reports of this proposal are true, that NASA has as little to do with it as possible.

Reading Robert Heinlein's juveniles when I was a kid got me started reading science fiction, which has had a major effect on my life, and Heinlein has remained one of my favourite authors. I'm not the only one feeling this way; there's the Heinlein Society, and now I've found the Heinlein Blog, which is devoted to all things Heinlein, as well as related topics like science fiction and cats.

If you're thinking buying Heinlein's hithertoo unpublished first novel, For Us, the Living, you might want to check out the review on the blog first.

Adobe formally announced the release of FrameMaker 7.1 today. The news of the release was leaked at the FrameUsers Conference at the end of October.

New features include: better support for XML, new import filters for Quark XPress and Pagemaker, direct placement of PhotoShop graphics, and better support for SVG, and the inclusion of Acrobat Distiller 6.0. I have to admit I'm distinctly underwhelmed. I probably won't try getting the upgrade at work, as there's nothing in the release that I need, unless it fixes some of the bugs that have cropped up (no word on that so far). And Mac users are left out in the cold, as this is a Windows and Solaris release only.

I think it really is time to start serioiusly looking for XML-based alternatives. If this is the best Adobe can do after eighteen months, the future of FrameMaker looks bleak.