Reposting per Joe Offer comment in help thread. Clone please delete previous duplicate.

Amos -

You are right, indeed, that Framemaker is one of the "powerhouse" layout programs.

Framemaker has actually found its greatest use in the magazine publishing houses, where they have lots of "flashy" inserts, drop caps, frequent color changes and all of the kind of stuff that makes for gaudiness and ostentation - and amuses juvenile readers.

While all of the above does not make for good books, Framemaker is a capable program that can be used as a book publishing tool - if used with some restraint. It does allow you to move "framed elements" around quite easily, but it also gives less precise control of some of the things that can happen inside the frames than users of other programs might expect.

Any of the "pro" tools will do most of the things you mention quite handily. The one big advantage that Framemaker appears to have is that - with the proper "extensions" - it has the ability to automate the incorporation of XML properties in a document. This means that one document can (theoretically) be used to produce a book, an online reference, a program help file, and ... ... on ... and ... on. Unfortunately, with those extensions, we're talking $1300+ (US) worth of software.

QuarkExpress has been mentioned. So far as I can tell, it finds most use among dedicated "Mac Drivers." It is a very good program, where it's the "house choice."

Pagemaker, which originated as a Mac program, is probably still the dominant program for book publishing - that is for books meant for reading as opposed to sitting on a coffee table. While I wouldn't want to offend anyone, I must note that the Windows version of Pagemaker now incorporates a few features not available in the Mac version. (The same is true of Word.)

Significant progress has been made in making things transferable back and forth between Mac and Win machinery, but it's still not perfect. This machinery (the software especially) is so expensive that it is usually a "house decision" to go one way or the other, and it is "inefficient" to mix Mac and Win machines to any great extent. You use what you're given, or what the customer (and the job) demands.

The Mac was popular, and survived, in the "early days" because it had a better processor (which also made it more expensive) and because it did a better job of handling PostScript. Virtually all commercial large volume printing is PostScript based. The differences in capabilities between Mac and Win machinery have been pretty much "erased" with respect to artwork layout and publishing operations at present. Either can do the job now - although there are some annoying consequences of trying to interbreed them.

Any of the major programs (all very expensive by individual user standards) can do the job - at least in the context of the discussion that has thus far transpired here.

You may note that Pagemaker and Framemaker are both Adobe products. Pagemaker users would generally say that their chief complaint about Framemaker is that it forces arbitrary choices (styling restrictions) on them - much as you complain about Micro$oft doing in Word.

John