[comp.text] Interleaf

lang@PRC.Unisys.COM (Francois-Michel Lang) (09/21/90)

Has anyone had any significant experience with Interleaf?
Our research group tends to be pretty proficient with ditroff
and (La)TeX, but we're considering purchasing some Interleaf
licenses.  From everything we've heard, it's *wonderful*
and can do anything and everything.  If that's the case,
why doesn't everyone out there use it?  Is it because
(as I understand it) Interleaf is quite expensive and
a real memory hog, or are there other reasons?

Any info on Interleaf (pro or con) would be appreciated.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Francois-Michel Lang                                (215) 648-2536
Unisys Center for Advanced Information Technology   lang@prc.unisys.com      
Dept of Comp & Info Science, U of PA                lang@linc.cis.upenn.edu

gla@nixdorf.de (R. Glaschick) (09/24/90)

In <15057@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> lang@PRC.Unisys.COM (Francois-Michel Lang) writes:

>Has anyone had any significant experience with Interleaf?
>Our research group tends to be pretty proficient with ditroff
>and (La)TeX, but we're considering purchasing some Interleaf
>licenses.  From everything we've heard, it's *wonderful*
>and can do anything and everything.  If that's the case,
>why doesn't everyone out there use it?  Is it because
>(as I understand it) Interleaf is quite expensive and
>a real memory hog, or are there other reasons?

We are using Interleaf in two documentation groups and both are very happy
with it.
But it was only available on Apollos that time, although a PC version
should be present now.
Keep in mind, that normally the best thing is not the most widespread,
the opposite is true in general. (see 80x86 machine architecture,
Transputer, and more).
--
Rainer Glaschick, NIXDORF Computer AG, Paderborn, W-Germany
EMail: glaschick.pad@nixdorf.com (US) or  glaschick.pad@nixdorf.de (EU)
Tel. +49 5251 14 6150 (office) +49 5254 6238  (home) Fax: +49 5251 14 6569

josef@nixpbe.UUCP (Moellers) (09/24/90)

In <gla.654168877@peun33> gla@nixdorf.de (R. Glaschick) writes:

[stuff deleted]

>Keep in mind, that normally the best thing is not the most widespread,
>the opposite is true in general. (see 80x86 machine architecture,
>Transputer, and more).

I couldn't have said it better. To add to the list:
	Video Standards: VHS vs. BETA
	OSs: MS-DOS vs. The Rest Of The OSs
	CPUs: ns32k vs. 80x86
	...

--
| Josef Moellers		|	c/o Nixdorf Computer AG	|
|  USA: mollers.pad@nixdorf.com	|	Abt. PXD-S14		|
| !USA: mollers.pad@nixdorf.de	|	Heinz-Nixdorf-Ring	|
| Phone: (+49) 5251 104662	|	D-4790 Paderborn	|

zwicky@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky) (09/26/90)

Many of you will already have noticed that Interleaf is not my
favorite program. It just dropped in my opinion. After numerous
phone calls and a wait of some months, I just succeeded in
purchasing the filters that I was told would let me drive my Imagen
printers, in Impress, from a Sun 4 - I already drive these printers
from Sun 3s, but we have succeeded in upgrading almost all our Sun 3
servers, and are having to drive the printers from more and more
out-of-the-way machines. As it turns out, they are filters
that would let me drive someone else's Imagen printers in Impress
from a Sun 4; along the way, nobody bother to mentioned to me that
they only work on printers that have just about all the bells and
whistles you can attach to an Imagen. Not only do they have to have
the Turbo option and the latest software, they also have to have the
optional font cache. Now, as it happens, on our printers you can only
get the Turbo option as part of the PostScript upgrade, so this only
would work on the printers I could already drive in PostScript from
the Sun 4s. Worse than that, we don't have the optional font cache on
any of our printers; it's an option, after all.

Nice of them not to tell me until after I paid them $1500...

	Elizabeth Zwicky

piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum) (09/26/90)

>>>>> In article <josef.654188290@peun11>, josef@nixpbe.UUCP (Moellers)
(JM) writes:

JM> I couldn't have said it better. To add to the list:
JM> 	Video Standards: VHS vs. BETA

Add to that:                          Video 2000 (the best of the three).
Unfortunately, now defunct.
-- 
Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University,
Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Telephone: +31 30 531806   Uucp:   uunet!mcsun!ruuinf!piet
Telefax:   +31 30 513791   Internet:  piet@cs.ruu.nl   (*`Pete')

pierrot@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Tatjana Heuser) (10/25/90)

I used to take Interleaf at work for documentation purposes.
For that it's great. It's only for mathematical purposes I wasn't that
confident and returned to TeX. 
btw. Does anybody know to what extent TeX sources were used for
the programming of interleaf? Imho the concepts are very much alike,
expect that Interleaf managed to do a really good wysiwyg job.
(before seeing interleaf I planned something of that kind for myself.
Knowing the job would be a bit "too large" for me I was rather glad to
see Interleaf to have done the job already :-)
What I'd really like would be Interleaf to produce an optional
TeX output for future editing. (mathematical stuff as _large_ integrals,
etc.)
-tatjana
--
Pierrot le fou      | UUCP: pierrot@tubopal.UUCP (pierrot@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de)
Tatjana Heuser      |         ...!unido!tub!opal!pierrot (Europe) 
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dja@meaddata.com (Dave Anderson) (10/26/90)

In article <2117@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de> pierrot@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Tatjana Heuser) writes:

   btw. Does anybody know to what extent TeX sources were used for
   the programming of interleaf? Imho the concepts are very much alike,
   expect that Interleaf managed to do a really good wysiwyg job.

Interleaf was not derived from TeX sources.