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From: matt@saber.com
Newsgroups: comp.mail.multi-media
Subject: Re: BBN/Slate users?
Message-ID: <9105101951.AA02671@rapier>
Date: 10 May 91 19:51:52 GMT
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Distribution: inet
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> ... now that I'm in the business of
> recommending things like this to clients (VICOR is a systems engineering
> firm) I must say Slate and its prospective competitors are hard sells. It
> would certainly help, for example, if Slate performed as well as Framemaker
> on X terminals--as I already suggested in my previous message--or
> accommodated Bob Weiner's other "gripes" (including providing a Motif user
> interface (with many fewer levels of menus!) and making it easier to
> override paragraph formats).
> 
> So, help me out, Slate users: What do you REALLY use Slate for? And why do
> you use it instead of more "standard" (and sometimes more usable)
> alternatives?

I'm biased, of course, since I spent almost 5 years as a member of the
Slate development team at BBN, but I think my impressions would be the
same even had I not been part of that group.

I use Slate for everything I write where content is more important than
precise formatting.  As far as the kind of things Slate does, I don't know
that there ARE any more "standard" alternatives.  Certainly, I would never
consider using Frame for most of the things I use Slate for; nor would I
consider using Slate for some of the things I use Frame for.  They're 
different tools, designed for different tasks.

When I'm in technical mode -- writing design documents, proposal, various
kinds of technical/scientific papers, etc. -- I use Slate because it does
the things I want in those materials (spreadsheets, good vector graphics,
enclosures).  When I have to write something where precise formatting and
nifty multicolumn layout is important, I don't use Slate for that.  At 
least, not yet... (right, guys? :-)

The thing I like most about Slate is the high degree of programmability
and customization it allows.  Some of you might recall a while back when
I sent out a note explaining how to use OpenWindows scalable fonts with
Slate.  At the moment, I'm working on how to replace the previewer with
the OpenWindows pageview tool.  It's a little tricky, since pageview
won't read standard input for a filename -- I think I'm going to have to
generate synthetic events to make it reload the PostScript file after
changes.  Ugh...  But the point is, I can do things like this with Slate,
because it was designed to let me change the way it works.  That's not 
true of many otherwise comparable tools.

(FYI, I happen to agree that the menu hierarchy is too complex.  That's
why I replaced it in my own copy.  The Slate manual on customization talks
a lot about how to set up your own menus -- it's well worth reading!)

I think of Slate as multimedia Emacs, and use it in many of the same ways.
Granted, the programming language isn't as complete and flexible as any
Emacs I know of, but it's also younger than most Emacs'en.  Besides, when's
the last time you saw someone use Emacs to grab a window image, stuff it
into a buffer, stick a spreadsheet next to it, and mail the whole thing to
someone on the other side of the world?  :-)

[Yes, I just did this sequence of operations -- elapsed time: 2 min 37 sec
from the time I started to the time Slate said "Message sent."]

							- Matt -