Here are the major differences between Adobe InDesign, Adobe FrameMaker and AEM Guides (formerly XML Documentation for Adobe Experience Manager).
| InDesign | FrameMaker | AEM Guides | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Industry-leading layout and page design software for print and digital media. | A document processor for writing and editing large or complex documents, including structured documents. | Multichannel publishing of DITA content for product documentation, policies and procedures, and long-form marketing content, managed in a component content management system. Formerly named XML Documentation for Adobe Experience Manager. |
| Kind of tool | Essentially a desktop publishing and layout tool. | Suited to structured and unstructured documentation with various outputs. Structured FrameMaker documents enforce consistency; unstructured ones use tagged paragraphs without a logical structure. | Structured content management in a component content management system. |
| Focus | Fine-tuning the output. Content takes a back seat to page layout; it is not designed for authoring. | Authoring. A word processor mainly used for technical writing of formatted documents. | An easy WYSIWYG web editor for granular, presentation-agnostic, variant-free content. |
| Formats | Supports XML, style sheets and other markup. | DITA- and XML-based publishing. | Powerful DITA authoring and content management. Out-of-the-box ingestion migrates Word, XHTML, IDML and more to DITA. |
| Features | Limited: content creation and design. | Moderate: content creation with less design capability, and advanced publishing. | Content reuse, version management, reference management, search and metadata tag management, translation workflows and content health reports. |
| Scale | Best for a small number of pages; a lot of content is hard to maintain. | Supports a large number of pages. | Supports a large number of pages. |
| Best for | Graphic design with typography from top foundries and imagery from Adobe Stock: brochures, magazines, stationery, flyers, posters, annual reports and books. | Technical documentation with headings, chapters and sections, such as user manuals, where topic-based structured authoring matters. | Delivering content to AEM Sites, mobile apps, knowledge bases, CRM platforms, IoT apps, chatbots, PDF, HTML5, EPUB, Kindle and more. |
| Review | Share for Review starts collaborative reviews with stakeholders without leaving InDesign. | Many review and collaboration setups, including multi-level reviewers. | Web-based review and collaboration: multiple authors and reviewers work at the same time, even remotely. |
| AEM integration | Integrates with Adobe Experience Manager. | Integrates with Adobe Experience Manager through a connector. | Installed directly in AEM. Native integration with FrameMaker, Oxygen and other desktop tools for importing and exporting DITA. |
| Metadata | Static metadata stored with the XMP standard for images and files; can be imported and exported. | Static metadata stored with the XMP standard for images and files; can be imported and exported. | Dynamic metadata that can be imported, exported and used for tagging and many other purposes. |
| Reporting | No content reporting. | No content reporting. | Reports on content reuse, version history, DITA maps and link references. |
| Translation | No built-in translation. Documents are exported to IDML and translated externally. | Built-in XLIFF translation support; content can also be exported to third-party translators. | Translation management and localization with AEM's built-in translation (DITA and content) plus third-party translator support. |
| Search | Simple find and search. | Flexible search across a book, bookmap or DITA map. | Comprehensive search and content usage data. |
Which one to choose
- InDesign for designed, layout-driven print and digital pieces with a modest page count.
- FrameMaker for long technical documents written by technical writers, structured or unstructured.
- AEM Guides for structured DITA content managed at scale and published to many channels, including AEM itself.