This is a log of my attempt to teach myself Adobe Framemaker 8. I'm hoping it will be useful to me and other novices. And perhaps Adobe will find it and think, "Hey! Maybe we should design a program that's actually user-friendly. Maybe using Framemaker shouldn't feel like a running the gauntlet..."
That would be nice.
I know most internet correspondents adore Framemaker. "So powerful! So muscular! So stable!" they say, droolingly. But these commentators are also highly competent specialists in their fields. And, as the actors in Excedrin commercials used to ask us scornfully, why trust experts? Framemaker fans have been using the application since the early 90s, when book-publishing software apparently entailed a mystical journey through dark and ominous land, where your only tools were a sextant and an abacus. Compared to that, Framemaker looks pretty good.
But I came of age in an era when sycophantish paperclips tied themselves in knots in their anxiety to simplify my computing experience. In my world, corners are rounded, buttons are standardized, and menus are familiar and more or less intuitive (my world doesn't include Office 2007, obviously).
Framemaker sees no reason to welcome the uninitiated. Either you slay the dragon, or you get eaten. You can't just take a casual stroll out to the dragon's lair to say hello. Framemaker is the un-paperclip.
So I have reluctantly signed on to become a steely-eyed dragon-slayer, or at least, a dragon-crippler. This is a record of that process and of my reluctance.
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