nusbaum@turnkey.tcc.com (R. James Nusbaum) (12/25/88)
This discussion may have outlived itself in sun-spots, but I thought I'd try to put in my two cents worth. Frame is better for quick, free form, one-off documents such as newsletters, advertisements, graphic art, magazines, etc. Publisher is better for journal articles, books, collaborative documents and scientific papers. These are two separate niches in the document production world and no one tool could do both well without being overly complex and clumsy. The very power of Publisher lies in its structured environment. This allows you to set up rigid structures for things like thesis, IEEE transactions format, users manuals, etc. This power is the direct result of the TeX/LaTeX heritage. It allows large (or small) groups of people to collaborate on a document and be sure that the final product is consistent. I don't claim that Publisher meets all needs, in fact it serves a very different audience than Frame. Other advantages of Publisher: 1. Can be used form an ascii terminal (still very important in some environments) 2. Better graphics than Frame (I least the Frame I tried). This is a direct result of the fact that Publishers graphics tools are provided by a third party who can concentrate only on graphics. Maybe this should move to another forum now, but Publisher is a good product and the people at ArborText are very supportive. [[ Everyone should also remember that the product they tried last year (or the year before that) might not be the same as this year's. With all the competition in the document preparation world, the companies are continually improving their products: incorporating new features, cleaning up user interfaces, fixing old bugs, etc. --wnl ]] Jim Nusbaum ucrmath!proton!nusbaum@ucsd.edu Radiation Research Laboratory (714) 799-2177 Loma Linda University Medical Center Loma Linda, California