Many of you may understand the vaguries of the printing and publishing industry, so some you might be able to explain what seems to be an anomoly.

In attempting to get a book published, it was interesting to find that many printers use Mac Systems using Adobe PageMaker as a sort of industry standard.
PageMaker seems to be designed to take materials and transfer them directly to the printer quite efficiently.
PageMaker can be used to compose documents for printing.

The rub is that PageMaker cannot autogenerate indices. Let's assume that it doesn't generate Table of Contents either.

OK fine.

Adobe FrameMaker is adept at manufacturing all kinds of books and documents and autogenerate indices.

However.

Adobe FrameMaker does not have the facilities to print to the devices in the same manner as Adobe PageMaker.

One would expect that Adobe FrameMaker can seamlessly interface with Adobe PageMaker, but after a lot of hemming and hawing, lots of dead time on hold, the representative at Adobe said that they do not.
Apparently, the sanctioned method to transfer from FrameMaker to PageMaker (Great Maker!) is to export the file from FrameMaker to MS Word and then import the .doc file to PageMaker.
MS Word 7 and prior are the only supported versions of Word with which this can be done.

Now, .pdf was mentioned. However, according to the Rep, once you use Adobe Acrobat to create the .pdf file, it cannot be manipulated with PageMaker.
The documentation does say that PageMaker can import MS Publisher documents, however.

While this lack of integration is frustrating, the problem remains: How can someone submit their electronically formatted books to the printing house most efficiently and retain the attributes?

Any suggestions? Insights?

PS: I had the opportunity once to talk to Elizabeth Moon on a flight and she told me that her publisher accepted xywrite documents. Isn't that kind of legacy stuff?