Framemaker is still the option to choose if you want to make books. This is because it has the most comprehensive .pdf conversion options, and includes the ability to integrate mathematical formulae for the creation of complex academic documents.

Apart from Framemaker 7.1’s ability to work with many native Adobe file formats directly, the most important concept of Framemaker, with respect to very long and complex documents, is its ability to work with a number of small files that go to make up the book or document, and let the user update page numbering and indexing as the constituents are created. Ordinarily, with an application such as Microsoft Word, the user has to keep everything together as one unwieldy and delicate file, with the fear of it all crashing.

Framemaker 7.1 contains many collaborative features, and is able to work with SGML and other structured document types. In comparison to 6.0 it is pretty demanding of system resources, so be aware of this, if upgrading or buying as new.

Users of Framemaker 7.1 should also purchase Acrobat Professional so that they can manipulate any .pdf output, since Framemaker can only create a .pdf and cannot do any editng of a .pdf.