laser-lovers@uw-beaver (08/02/85)
From: Marshall Rose <mrose%NRTC@USC-ECL.arpa> I saw a very slick demonstration of an interleaf workstation a couple of days ago and I was wondering if anyone would care to make some comments one way or the other on the system. Basically, they supply a lot of software that you run on a SUN workstation. The final output device is an Imagen-8/300 which is on an ethernet. The user-interface is the usual icon-drive stuff, but what's interesting is that they represent documents and the like as structured objects and, when you change the attribute of an object (e.g., a paragraph), they update the entire document in "real-time". They also integrate graphics with the system very smoothly. In a nutshell, interleaf is very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get system. What I'm interested in is: what quality of decisions does the system make when it comes to line/page-breaking and so on. The software looks like it runs really fast on a SUN when you change the document, so I suspect that it's being rather simple-minded about things (compared to the high-quality decisions that TeX would make about things). /mtr ps: let's avoid flames about WYSIWYG systems and try and stick to the merits of the interleaf system. thanks!
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (08/05/85)
From: Robert Morris <ram%umass-boston.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> As a matter of fact, the Interleaf software is available on Sun, Apollo, MicroVax, and Cadmus workstations and supports the Imagen 8/300 printer, a Dataproducts 26 page/minute printer. Interleaf sells turnkey systems based on any of the stations except the Cadmus, and sells software only on all of them. All of these are currently delivered. Support for the Monotype Lasercomp typesetter has been shipped to beta sites. Interleaf's headquarters is at 1100 Massachussetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138, tel (617)-497-5570. bob morris Interleaf, Inc. and UMass/Boston
laser-lovers@uw-beaver (08/05/85)
From: mips!hansen@Glacier (Craig Hansen) I've used Interleaf's Release 1.0 for several months. The system is really a joy (little j) to use, and I've produced documents up to about 100 pages without encountering serious performance problems. I have only demoed Release 2.0, which may have some H&J improvements. As to the quality of the hyphenation, justification, and letter-spacing; hyphenation is non-existant, which occasionally makes for extremes in white-space variation; justification has no control over orphans (single words appear on a line at the end of paragraphs), and the letter-spacing, while not bad on paper, is quite inaccurate when displayed on screen. The inaccuracies in the on-screen letter-spacing make it hard to build complicated diagrams without making frequent hard copies. The WYSIWYG diagramming system in Interleaf's product was what sold me; I was willing to live with what I considered minor flaws in the H&J software to get the functionality and performance the system provides. Craig Hansen MIPS Computer Systems