Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Potential buyer's questions
Message-ID: <91906@sun.uucp>
Date: 1 Mar 89 20:43:26 GMT
References: <2014@pur-phy>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 65

In article <2014@pur-phy> (Ray Moody) writes:
>		      (This is a posting for my roommate)

Ray, pass this on to Ken, :-)

>I have some questions concerning the Amiga that I hope some of you out there
>will be able to provide answers/opinions on:

Reaonable concerns I'd say.

>1) How well does the Amiga interface with popular laser printers?  I am quite
>   pleased with the way a laser printer works with a Macintosh... is it as
>   smooth on the Amiga?  

Smooth is a subjective adjective. I print TeX .dvi files on the LaserWriter
that are as good as Interleaf can produce. And all I type is 
	1>dvips document.dvi
Can I whip up to a menu option and say "Print" no, not really although I
bet if Tom Rokicki is reading this and realized how easy it would be to
put a Print-It icon on the previewer that would start the program in 
the environment variable texprinter with a pointer to the file you were
currently viewing, I suspect he would be able to implement it in a weekend
or so.

>2) Are you happy overall with the quality of the desktop publishing programs
>   available for the Amiga?  My general feeling _at this point_ is that the
>   software for the Amiga is not as varied or as mature as on the Macintosh
>   (what with the likes of Pagemaker on the low end to Quark Xpress and
>   Interleaf on the high end).  Is this an accurate assessment?  Are there any
>   features specifically that you feel are missing in the current generation
>   of Amiga DTP titles?

At this point things are about as advanced as they were for the Macintosh
when it was three years old. Of course we didn't have MacDraw and MacWrite
to begin with (but we did have Deluxe Paint). Since the Mac at this point
"discovered" that it's market niche was Desktop Publishing it attacked it
tenaciously. The Amiga has discovered that Desktop Presentations are it's
forte' and is attacking them instead.  That doesn't mean it isn't getting
better, it just means that funded developer resources are leaning toward
the former latter than the former.

>3) Will the 68020 option make a considerable difference in operation speed
>   for most Amiga productivity programs?  Does anyone see compatibility
>   problems?  I have noticed, for example, that text manipulation with
>   Professional Page is very slow-- would the 68020 CPU make a noticeable
>   difference?

Generally this is where it makes the most impressive improvements. Much
time in publishing programs is spent calculating the "rendered" image.

>Thanks for any information you can provide.  I would like to buy an Amiga
>because I feel it is superior machine overall to the Macintosh, especially
>with its multi- tasking.  However, the quality of the desktop publishing
>environment for the machine will probably be the deciding factor.

My personal feeling is that the Desktop publishing "environment" will 
continue to be better on the Macintosh. However, it is certainly 
beyond the "usable" stage on the Amiga. As a programmer I prefer the
non WYSIWYG nature of TeX since I can get more information on the screen
at once and viewing the "final" form is merely a function key away.
The reason you might want to go with the Amiga is that is will save you
money and will go farther than a Mac SE or II will. 
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.