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From: barry@hcx1.SSD.HARRIS.COM
Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop
Subject: Re: interleaf on a mac
Message-ID: <39600@sun.uucp>
Date: 21 Jan 88 19:32:56 GMT
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Distribution: comp
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While I've not had the chance to review Interleaf on the Mac II, I have
had several conversations with Interleaf sales people. According to
what I've been able to gather, Interleaf on the Mac is similar to
Interleaf on other platforms (Sun, Apollo, etc.) with reduced
functionality (at least initially).  They alluded to the idea that the
Mac version would not support scanning (and maybe a couple other things
of which I cannot remember now).

One of the questions you need to ask yourself is...how much volume am I
going to be publishing? The main advantage Interleaf has over other Mac
software (Word, RSG, Pagemaker, MacDraw, etc) is speed and document length.
While some Mac applications can handle fairly large files, in my
experience, none can handle the sheer volume of documentation Interleaf
can on a day to day basis.  In addition, Interleaf combines its writing,
drawing, and layout tools; so you don't have to swap applications to
get a job done. This last point has been diminished somewhat in
importance lately with the introduction of multifinder, however, using
several applications to do a job still requires a certain amount of
compatibility. I have used up to eight different drawing programs on
the Mac to do technical illustrations and while some can read each
other's formats (and most can read PICT format), I still find
incompatibility in several areas. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I
could perform my job nearly as well if it weren't for my Mac.

When I was using Interleaf, its diagramming tools had most everything I
needed to do really decent technical drawings. and the writing tools
were excellent also.  However, it IS expensive and there is a learning
curve. A fairly large learning curve if you want to tap all of its
features.  The one thing I wish Interleaf could do though - is what
Adobe Illustrator can do. Sigh.
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