ray@maxwell.physics.purdue.edu (Ray Moody) (03/01/89)
(This is a posting for my roommate) I am seriously considering some configuration of an Amiga 2000 for my next computer, most likely a 2500. I am a technical writer/publisher by trade, and have used a Macintosh II extensively at work. I have some questions concerning the Amiga that I hope some of you out there will be able to provide answers/opinions on: 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? 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? 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? 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. Kent Sullivan
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (03/02/89)
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.
dale@boing.UUCP (Dale Luck) (03/05/89)
In article <2014@pur-phy> ray@maxwell.physics.purdue.edu (Ray Moody) writes: >with its multi- tasking. However, the quality of the desktop publishing >environment for the machine will probably be the deciding factor. FrameMaker from Frame Technolgies looks great on the Amiga. We had their displays up on both the moniterm (1008x800) and an appleII style monitor hooked up to an A500. The characters and graphics looks very professional as well as when their people tried it out on the amiga's the complemented the responsiveness. Oh yes, this was running under X11. Frame was actually running on an Sun3 or an HP machine. (They had versions for both). If you had a department that could use a dtp package. Getting a unix machine to actually run their code and a bunch of Amiga's would be a perfectly workable solution. If you are alone though, we'll have to wait till they decide to port their code to the Amiga. Should not be that hard once the Xlib is available for the Amiga for one of the C compilers. -- Dale Luck GfxBase/Boing, Inc. {uunet!cbmvax|pyramid}!amiga!boing!dale