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From: coderre@DSSDEV.DEC (Plaid poindexter barbats--Zippy)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.laser-printers
Subject: ATEX/AKI, and what it means to you
Message-ID: <8512271914.AA26630@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Fri, 27-Dec-85 13:47:41 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.8512271914.AA26630
Posted: Fri Dec 27 13:47:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Dec-85 14:15:45 EST
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Atex (a division of Kodak) is a medium-sized, somewhat matured startup
firm that produces big newspaper-oriented composition systems (i.e. the
whole shebang down to custom terminals, and not "general-purpose" but
dedicated).
Once upon a time they hired another company (AKI -- Automix Keyboards Inc)
to turn their great big "city newspaper"-style system into a smaller
"type shop" system.
Now, the Atex system is truly dedicated: they have their own crazy disk
controllers to do HNJ (hyphenate-and-justify) really fast. The terminals
have lots of special-purpose keys on them, one labelled "HNJ", so on. The
Atex systems are also "connectable", so the Boston Glob and USAYesterday
use, like, a "mess" of processors all connected together, transparent to
the users. Hot stuff. But just for newspaper/type shop kinds of situations.
Now, Atex handles almost every kind of typesetter available, usually very
well. The marking system is not WYSIWYG, but rather WYSIwhere-the-line-breaks.
They have different rendition modes (bright, underline, reverse, blink,
combinations) to indicate type styles. All the newswriter has to know is that
bright is bold, underline is italic, etc. Of course, the user can easily
redefine these modes as he wants or draw them from a "style file."

I work at the MIT student newspaper *The Tech*, and we own an 8-terminal
AKI setup. It cost a LOT ($50K<x<$100K). We have decided that it was the
best (and most expensive) system we could have bought. This several years
down the road.

Atex systems do almost everything right, and have so few bugs in them that
it is appalling. The popular word processor *XyWrite* is of the same
inspiration as the Atex systems. Many things work in just the same way.

To the question: Atex does support over-the-modem style input, with lots
of good tricks to convert input into non-common typesetting marks. You
can define your own translations, i.e. "@m" could convert to an em dash,
which I'll bet your terminal doesn't have on it (Atex keyboards do).
You will have to talk to your system wizards or Atex helper to find out
just what stuff you need to do this (a modem port and optional software,
probably). After that, you set up the translation tables and modem server
(mysteriously called REMOCR, you will want to play with the GOPs, too!),
and wait for data to pour in.

I myself typeset a medium-sized (30pp/month) newsletter on The Tech's
AKI in just that fashion. 

Send any replies to me directly.......................................bc