Bad news: Adobe has killed FrameMaker for MacOS. I can assure you that the MacOS FrameMaker user community is outraged. Well… okay, I can only really assure you that half the MacOS FrameMaker user community is outraged. The other half consists of Francine Kopecki, a 53-year-old contract technical writer in Lansing, Michigan. Not exactly sure what Frannie thinks, but at least I’m plenty annoyed.

Of course, the writing was on the wall, so there’s no point in being too upset. Some people speculate that if Adobe had gotten around to porting FrameMaker to OS X, it might have done a little better in the marketplace. I can certainly say that I would have snapped up an OS X version, but again, I can’t speak for Frannie. Besides, FrameMaker would have just looked weird in OS X. Can you imagine taking that horrible CDE-inspired interface and spraying on a light coat of Aqua? Perhaps it’s best that Adobe never unleashed that monstrosity on the unsuspecting public.

The only upside from all this has been amusing flood of Recommendations For FrameMaker Replacements From People Who Have Never In Their Lives Actually Used FrameMaker. InDesign? OpenOffice? Stop, you’re killing me!

Well, at least we can all take comfort in the fact that Adobe’s development efforts for FrameMaker are abysmally slow. It will probably be years before they manage to crank out FrameMaker 8.0, and the serious backwards-compatibility issues start in earnest. Huzzah for lack of competition! Still, unlike Adobe, I can’t rest on my laurels. Even though the day of FrameMaker 8.0 is probably far off, it’s important to start spewing a thick cloud of FUD at work now, well before my company decides to upgrade. “Did you hear? Adobe’s using a new kind of shrinkwrap that’s highly teratogenic.” My luck, they’ll just make me open the box.