kcng@pollux.usc.edu (Keung-Chi Ng) (11/14/89)
About 3 weeks ago, I posted a request on both IBM-PC and MAC
news group of the USENET for information about desktop publishing on
these machines. I have received about 10 responses so far (less than
what I anticipated), and I would like to take this opportunity to
thank those who responded to my request. As I have mentioned earlier,
I will post a summary and here it is.
1) What are the differences between desktop publishing and word
processing?
Word processing is mainly concerned with the ability to
manipulate text, change style and spacing, check spelling, etc. Thus,
it can be viewed as a more fancy editor. On the other hand, desktop
publishing also incorporates the positioning of graphics and text,
flowing text around graphics, adding borders and shades, and the
ability to use color and print separations. In essence, desktop
publishing provides more facilities to enhance the production of
complicated, high-quality documents. The differences between desktop
publishing and word processing programs, however, are rapidly
narrowing and getting fuzzy.
2) What are the latest desktop publishing products available on
macintosh and IBM-PC? What are the prices of these products and what
kind of special features that they have?
a) Mac
i) Layout: PageMaker, Quark XPress, ReadySetGo
ii) Illustration: Aldus FreeHand, Adobe Illustrator
iii) Word processing: Word4
b) IBM
i) Layout: PageMaker, Ventura, WordPerfect 5.0
ii) Word processing: WordPerfect
Most of the desktop publishing softwares listed above are
available at a price between $400 to $600. For the Mac, PageMaker is
the one recommended by most of the responses that I got. For the IBM,
both PageMaker and Ventura are recommended.
There is no mention of TeX (LaTex), another text formatting
program, that can produce documents of the same quality as most desktop
publishing programs available. It is avaliable on both Mac (Textures)
and IBM-PC (sbLatex?). In order to use TeX efficiently, one has to
learn a new "language," which may be the reason why it is not
mentioned as a desktop publishing program (most desktop publishing
programs are relatively simple to use).
Also, one response suggested that I should not leave out other
hardware platforms, such as Amiga and other PCs.
3) Where can I find some good reference to this topic?
There are third party book available for PageMaker and
Ventura. The magazines "Personal Publishing" and "Publish" are
dedicated to this topic. More general reference to the topic an be
obtained by reading computer magazines (e.g., BYTE, MacUser, MacWorld,
PC magazine, etc.) and the news groups (e.g., mac, ibm.pc, amiga,
etc.) on the USENET. Reviews on different desktop publishing
softwares can be found in back issues of the above magazines. The
current issue of "PC Magazine" (Nov 14, 1989) contains a chart showing
an imformal survey of desktop publishing programs that are used most
on page 64.
I do not anticipate to receive more responses to this topic,
however, if I do receive enough responses after that, I will post
another summary. Thanks again for those who responded to my request.
KC
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Keung-Chi Ng INTERNET: kcng@pollux.usc.edu
Computer Science Department UUCP: {sdcrdcf,cit-cav}!oberon!pollux!kcng
University of Southern California CSNET: kcng@pollux.csnet
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0782 BITNET: kcng@pollux.bitnet