FM 7 on OS X in Classic Mode

Problem
Some user feedback
Additional information
A clarification

See also FrameMaker on Intel Macs

Problem

"Adobe has announced no plans to release FrameMaker 7.1 on the Mac OS X platform," the company said in a statement. Adobe said it will continue to sell and support Version 7.0 on the Mac for OS 9 and Classic.

Don't be put off by this announcement (and Adobe's thin answers to insisting questions).
«A petition with 2500 signatures, for a software product that costs about $700 new, represents $1.75 million. Even if half of them were upgrading and paying only 1/2 the fees, it is still well over $1M. Seems like it is worth a recompile and some packaging... »[ hoco, tribe.net]

Sign the petition "Adobe FrameMaker for Mac OS X".

Some user feedback

Keyboard setup

I have manged the problem with the keyboard (Hello Bernd, which problem?). The keyboard assignment must be changed for the OS9 mode: Apple Menu > Control Panels > Keyboard.

Creating PDF

You can not Save as PDF in Classic Mode. However, you can create a PostScript file and then distill it to a PDF.

Assure that also in the Classic environment the printer named FrameMakerPDFWriter is available. If not then Acrobat was installed correctly or with the apropriate options.

Check the System folder > System Extensions to find the printer description files FMPdfWriter and FMPdfWriterData.

[Bernd Meißner]

Additional information from the FM 7 ReadMe file

FrameMaker installs a custom desktop printer called FrameMakerPDFWriter. This desktop printer is used by the Save As PDF functionality in FrameMaker to automate PDF creation. To activate this desktop printer after installation of FrameMaker, you may need to open Chooser, select the AdobePS icon, then close Chooser. You may then reopen Chooser if you wish to re-select your previous printer driver.

Selecting AdobePS will create two additional desktop printers- "Create Adobe PDF" and "Virtual Printer". Create Adobe PDF can be used to create PDF files from any application by selecting it in Page Setup or Print and printing directly to it. Virtual Printer is similarly used to create PostScript files. You should NOT use FrameMakerPDFWriter separately to create PDF files through the Print dialog - it is customized for internal FrameMaker use and may not give the appropriate results if used as a general desktop printer.

FrameMakerPDFWriter functionality can be sporadic on MacOS-X, such that the PDF item in the Save As dialog is grayed-out when running in Classic mode under OS-X. Instead, please print to the Create Adobe PDF desktop printer on MacOS-X to create PDF files.

Additional information

See this valuable information from Paul Findon on his www.fm4osx.org (saved in this PDF)

Siehe auch den artikel von David Uhlmann in publisher 2005/1 «Brückenbauer Classic-Umgebung». Zwar für die leute in der druckvorstufe geschrieben, kann hier auch der FrameMaker anwender wichtige information finden.

A clarification

First off, Sam, your initial assertion of 'Tiger does NOT support OS 9 in any form' is misleading (forgive my bluntness): it's not a Tiger (i.e. OS) restriction, but a hardware restriction. All versions of OS X have supported OS 9 in its Classic form, a software wrapper that allows a full OS 9 to run within the OS X environment. And within that, FrameMaker runs just fine, as long as you follow the guidelines given here

What is true is that none of the most recent range of Intel-chipped Macs run Classic. This is hardware issue: Apple chose not to port Classic to these machines. This is a situation that a lot of clever people are working on, as Apple appears to be unaware that many Mac users are still dependent on legacy software. But for FrameMaker, the option at present on these machines is to run one of the software solutions that support Windows or Windows apps:

Boot Camp
Parallels
CodeWeavers

Finally, Peter Gold's point about dual-boot Macs only applies to older hardware models. I forget when the last dual-boot Mac was dropped, but you should be able to find out here. For what it's worth, I have a 2000-vintage Cube that is dual boot, and a 2004-vintage G4 that is not, so it was sometime between those years.

[2006-10-11 Steve Rickaby, srickaby, wordmongers period demon period co period uk]