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Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop,mail.framers
Subject: Re: Any good WYSIWIG desktop publishing software on UNIX Workstations?
Message-ID: <1990Jul11.194649.8559@Matrix.COM>
Date: 10 Jul 90 20:27:29 GMT
References: <4662.647633645@ics.uci.edu>
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I have used Frame 1.? intensively for technical software design documents
and I found it:

	easy and good for transparencies with all graphics (circles, boxes, 
	black-and-white dumps from a section of the screen etc.) but it
	lacks non-horizontal text in the graphical tools

	powerful but difficult for mixed text and graphics (things like when 
	you have a document with chapters, sections, and subsections 
	automatically numbered and you want to stick relatively large 
	diagrams into the text that may go off the end of the page, or
	you want to import text from a document created with emacs),

	and relatively good but less convenient than emacs or MacWrite for 
	straight text generation (no easy multiple cut-buffers, no easy
	macros, no easy rebinding keys, you have to read the manual to make
	sense of TextRects).

Frame 1.? also has problems with things like it says someone else is using
the file whenever you want to save it.  I hear that 2.0 is MUCH better and
friendlier but I have never used it.

I hear that Interleaf is especially good for creating structured documents
in a particular format (e.g. repair manuals for related kinds of aircraft),
and that they also have the beginnings of an emacs-like LISP customization
and extension language.  If I remember right, they also provide an iconic
desktop which can make the filenames on a short-filename system seem
longer.  It would probably also be easier for things like defining a
footnote to be a certain group of fonts.  You probably have to set up more
ahead of time with Interleaf.  I have not used Interleaf.

The choice between them probably depends on what you want to do.

Mary-Anne Wolf
mwolf@granite.cr.bull.com or mwolf@pws.bull.com
These opinions are my own and not my employer's.