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From: chuck@melmac.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: Which is better?  Textprocessing langs or DeskTop publishing pgms?
Keywords: desktop DTP interleaf tex troff
Message-ID: <2658@trantor.harris-atd.com>
Date: 7 Sep 89 18:31:42 GMT
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Organization: Advanced Technology Dept., Harris Corp., Melbourne, Fl.
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In article <1132@accuvax.nwu.edu> phil@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>How easy is it to make a new "form" or "style" in FrameMaker
>that will produce *good* looking documents?  Can you easily teach a
>secretary how to do that?

     In Frame, it is easier (I think) to create a new format because you
just draw it on the screen.  It was always a lot harder in troff because
you have to think things like "well, I want 0.25 inch of space before
the header, and the left margin should be moved over about 1.10 inch...".
In Frame, you just grab the margin and move it around until it looks right.
Surprisingly, our secretaries have gotten pretty good at this.

     I think that the WYSIWYG systems remove most of the system-dependent
vagaries from the design process and let the designer doodle electronically.
This is more productive than repeatedly debugging your formats with the 
edit-print-think loop that troff and TeX get you into.  This is particularly
true of strange layouts, like ad copy or newsletters.  Of course, your WYSIWYG
tool should have a really fluid, consistent, easy to use interface.

     Interleaf now has a Lisp interpreter built into it, so it is Turing-
complete, too.  I don't know of any such things for Frame or Publisher,
although Publisher promises a macro facility with conditionals and parameters
in its next version.

Chuck Musciano				ARPA  : chuck@trantor.harris-atd.com
Harris Corporation 			Usenet: ...!uunet!x102a!trantor!chuck
PO Box 37, MS 3A/1912			AT&T  : (407) 727-6131
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Gee, Beaver, everything that's fun can get you in trouble.  Haven't you
learned that yet? --Gilbert