uevans@med.unc.edu (Elizabeth A. Evans) (04/09/91)
We are in our periodic struggle about what software to provide to our Sun users for quality word processing/desktop publishing (as opposed to text editing which is a whole different headache). We started out using FrameMaker, but at the time the user interface was pretty bad for our users who, with very few exceptions, are hidden from the Unix environment by a menu interface. We then went to Alis. Alis has been OK (some good, some bad -- if anyone wants details, let me know), but for a variety of reasons, we're ready to try something else. We just got licensing information for FrameMaker and it looks expensive for providing wide-spread access. (We have about 1800 users of whom about 1000 are active and the number grows daily.) In the PC world, WordPerfect seems a perfectly good alternative for desktop publishing... it can incorporate graphics, do a number of fonts, supports many printers, etc. Before we decide where to put the money we've been spending on Alis maintenance and licensing fees, I'd like to get some feedback from people who are using WordPerfect 5.0 or 5.1 (is 5.1 available for SunOS, yet?) in the Sun environment. Our PC WP users would be *real* unhappy to have 4.2 presented to them on the Suns, so I'm really mostly interested in comments about 5.x. Comments about problems with upgrades, hardware, vendor support; licensing fees in or not in relationship to other packages; closeness to PC version; how well WP deals with users both on consoles and coming in from microcomputers with terminal emulation packages. Any other comments you can think of will also be muchly appreciated. :-) If this has been covered previously and you have copies of old articles, please send them as well. Reply to me and I'll summarize to the group. Thanks in advance. -- Elizabeth A. Evans Educational Coordinator University of NC School of Medicine Office of Information Systems uevans@med.unc.edu