Hello all,
I am trying to gather enough information in order to make an informed decision on which documentation tool is most appropriate for my new job.
A little background...I am an experience technical writer with Word (for shorter documentation) and FrameMaker (for larger documents). The last version of FrameMaker I had used was v9 (but I knew it very well).
Now, I am in a position to choose a publishing tool.
I currently own:
- Word 2013 (happy to continue to use this for shorter quick/dirty documentation)
- Creative Cloud
My choices for documentation (for various reasons) are currently [cost is not a number one concern]:
- FrameMaker (for familiarity reasons)
- MadCap Flare
- Sphinx (I was asked to look into this tool but reStructuredtext doesn't appeal to me and even offer the formatting flexibility I require)
Requirements:
- Must enable OS agnostic collaboration (usually just markups and commenting)
NOTE: My current solution is to output as PDF and save to Crocodoc personal (check them out!). So this requirement may be moot.
- Single source documentation that will output/accommodate (with little or no edits) to the following formats: XML/HTML5 (web publishing), and PDF. [also potentially CHM help format but this is a bonus]
- Excellent content/design control
- Must scale well for large documentation
- Corporate requirement: must play nice with git (gitorious.org) for source control
Questions:
- Are there any suitable tools, that meet all the above criteria, in the Adobe CC that I could leverage?
- If 1) is a negative, how well does FrameMaker v11 compare against MadCap Flare? What makes FM the better choice?
- I have heard that FrameMaker is end of life... Is that true? If so, what is replacing FrameMaker?
Thank you very much,
Shawn