G.CHIASSON@DREA-XX.ARPA (Don Chiasson) (01/19/88)
>From "Computing Canada", Jan 7, 1988, vol 14 no 1; p. 19:
"1987 Micro Year in Review"
The overwhelming micro and workstation software trend in 1987 was
desktop publishing: Yuppie-ism at its finest. Extravagant, ostentatious,
conspicuous and expensive, desktop publishing clearly demonstrates that
personal computing has reached boutique status. Now even the merest
memo must look as if it were published by Prentice-Hall.
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Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sunnews@sun.uucp (news) (01/22/88)
> The overwhelming micro and workstation software trend in 1987 was desktop > publishing: Yuppie-ism at its finest. Extravagant, ostentatious, > conspicuous and expensive, desktop publishing clearly demonstrates that > personal computing has reached boutique status. Now even the merest memo > must look as if it were published by Prentice-Hall. As a user of DeskTop Publishing, I have something to say about this. If all you are using DeskTop Publishing for is creating "the merest memo", then you are (more than likely) a YUPPIE. But, I for one (and my wife, for another [after all, she gets paid for it, I just help her for the fun of it :-) and because I love her.]) use DeskTop Publishing to GREATLY reduce the cost of printing: - Applications - Brochures - Newsletter (internal and mailed to customers) - Advertisements - and everything else that we paid printers to create camera-ready work for. After all, when something is sent to a printer, the printer wants money. And, more often than not, the layout and/or wording is changed. Printers have a rule, you change it, you PAY for it. If a set of camera-ready layouts cost $200 and you change it five times, you just paid $1,000 for the final camera-ready layout. It is not unusual for this company to make 10 to 20 changes. (Quick multiply that.) With what we have done, the company has saved all of the money that it spent for the computer, software, scanner, and fonts. It has also saved almost enough to pay for the printer. The savings for that will be total by the end of February. (Then we will talk about a faster computer. We really need a 386 system.) Memos and letters are still typed, either (if you need a few) by a person or (for mass mailings) by the computer. I fully agree that the use of a DeskTop Publishing system to generate memos, is not only "extravagant, ostentatious, conspicuous and expensive", but it is also one of the dumbest things that I have ever heard of. ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop-request Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sun
cramer@decwrl.dec.com (Clayton Cramer) (01/22/88)
> The overwhelming micro and workstation software trend in 1987 was > desktop publishing: Yuppie-ism at its finest. Extravagant, ostentatious, > conspicuous and expensive, desktop publishing clearly demonstrates that > personal computing has reached boutique status. Now even the merest > memo must look as if it were published by Prentice-Hall. I think this overstates the case, but I've seen quite a bit of this myself (and been guilty of a bit of it, too). Suddenly, even the most trivial memo in this place uses at least two font families, and two or more type sizes. I shudder to think how much time is getting wasted by runaway laser printing. Clayton E. Cramer ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop-request Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sun
jbarry@rambaud (John Barry) (01/22/88)
Desktop publishing is hyped beyond belief. It has a definite role to play in
publshing, but you can believe half or less of what you read about its
messianic nature. Also, if you aren't intimately familiar with your
applications and their exigencies, DP can seriously frustrate you and leave
you in the lurch.
Bottom line: If you know publishing, if you know what you're doing, if you
have specific goals, if you've done cost analyses, if your application
warrants it, DP can save you time and money.
Go into it naively, believing too much of the bullshit you hear and read,
and you could be screwed.
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Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sunmsf@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Michael S. Fischbein) (01/23/88)
>desktop publishing: Yuppie-ism at its finest. Extravagant, ostentatious, >conspicuous and expensive, desktop publishing clearly demonstrates that >personal computing has reached boutique status. Of course, TeX, LaTeX, their distributions; *roff and their distributions have enabled the capability of desktop publishing for years. All that has happened is that it has gotten easier, so there are fewer excuses for sloppy, hard to read copy. -- Michael Fischbein msf@ames-nas.arpa ...!seismo!decuac!csmunix!icase!msf These are my opinions and not necessarily official views of any organization. [moderator's kibbitz: While TeX has been available, it hasn't been available on machines that the average user might have available -- the packages that blazed the trail onto the Mac's and the PC's opened up a market that TeX simply hadn't addressed. Also, TeX is (1) not even remotely WYSIWYG (much as I hate that overused acronym) and has a pretty hefty learning curve. The advantages of PageMaker or Ready Set Go is that you can make them useful quickly -- if faced with TeX, my belief is that most users other layout packages wouldn't. Even if they aren't WYSIWYG in practice, they're close enough that it helps people who haven't spent lots of time with the program visualize the output. With TeX, you have to know enough about Tex to mentally visualize the output (or run it through a previewer constantly, which is a royal hassle] ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop-request Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sun
John_M@spectrix.UUCP (John Macdonald) (01/29/88)
It is not as outrageous as people have been making out to generate
internal memoes using a desktop publishing package. Of course you
will get a huge number of font/style/size changes on each line.
It is far better to learn how to use powerful new tools on short
exercises sent to a tolerant audience than to have to start your
learning on a major effort, for a critical audience, without any
extra time to learn the basic techniques (much less the advanced
features).
Of course, this does not excuse neglecting essential work to play
with every toy that comes along ("But boss, what if the company
comes up against a customer that chooses their supplier by comparing
rogue score files?").
--
John Macdonald UUCP: {mnetor,utzoo} !spectrix!jmm
UUCP: {utecfb,ontmoh,spectrix} !bml!jmm
(formerly of Spectrix, still using their computer for news)
Now working for Brown Manufacturing, Ltd. (soon to have their own feed)
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Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sunrusty@velveeta.Berkeley.EDU (rusty wright) (02/06/88)
> Also, TeX is (1) not even remotely WYSIWYG (much as I hate that > overused acronym) and has a pretty hefty learning curve. I agree that plain TeX is not easy to use, but the vast majority of people shouldn't be using plain TeX. If you're going to use TeX you need a set of macros that make it easy to type in your document and that handle all of the stylistic conventions that you're following (LaTeX is the best example). Basically, you should be worrying about the content and not about the formatting. WYSIWG systems tend to force you to be constantly aware of the formatting. This primarily applies to printed things that are long; books, reports, etc. or things that you do repeatedly that have the same format each time. Clearly, if I'm going to be doing a one page ad I'm better off using something like PageMaker. But if I'm doing a book I'd much rather use TeX. One of the other advantages of TeX is that on Unix and DOS (I'm not sure about TeXtures on the Mac) you can use your favorite editor to edit your .tex files. Typically the search, replace, macro capability, etc. capabilities of the WYSIWYG systems isn't nearly as good as a Unix or Unix descendant text editor (for example, emacs and vi). But the main point is that you shouldn't think that one program is going to fill all of your desktop publishing needs. -------------------------------------- rusty c. wright rusty@weyl.berkeley.edu ucbvax!weyl!rusty ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop-request Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sun
cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) (02/09/88)
There are many reasons why such processors as TeX are difficult for the
author to use. These objections would not be as strong if it is assumed
that the original is handwritten.
I prefer to compose my mathematical papers on the computer. I type faster
than I can write, and I have no difficulty thinking ahead of my typing.
However, I want to see what I am producing, and this cannot be done in
a non-WYSUWYG manner. Windowed previewers are not adequate unless the
screen supports a great many lines. Sometimes I want columnar output;
the input is almost completely unreadable in something like TeX. I do
not consider previewers as reasonable alternatives.
To those who say that WYSIWYG means that "What you get is only what you
see," I reply, "Why?" There is no reason that I can see for this, and I
suggest we call the resulting system WYSIAWYG.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (ARPA or UUCP) or hrubin@purccvm.bitnet
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Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ
What do you mean 'You don't really want to hurt her?'
I'm a Super-Villain! That's my Schtick!daveh@rutgers.edu (Dave Haynie) (02/13/88)
> I agree that plain TeX is not easy to use, but the vast majority > of people shouldn't be using plain TeX. If you're going to use TeX > you need a set of macros that make it easy to type in your document > and that handle all of the stylistic conventions that you're > following (LaTeX is the best example). And if you're running in a suitable graphics environment, you can run a previewing program to see what your final output will look like. There's an Amiga version of TeX that has such a previewer. > One of the other advantages of TeX is that on Unix and DOS (I'm not > sure about TeXtures on the Mac) you can use your favorite editor to > edit your .tex files. Though I haven't personally tried this, there are now Amiga version of TeX and one of the Micro Emacs editors that support AREXX interfaces. What this means is that you could very simply have an Emacs macro to take a region or buffer, run it through TeX, and fire up the previewer for you, all in one fell swoop. > Typically the search, replace, macro capability, etc. capabilities of the > WYSIWYG systems isn't nearly as good as a Unix or Unix descendant text > editor (for example, emacs and vi). Similarly, the word processing capabilities like sectioning, indexing, auto bibliographies, footnoting, subdocuments, etc. isn't as powerful in WYSIWYG wordprocessors as programs such as TeX or Scribe. Part of this is certainly based on the assumption that if you can see it happening, you won't mind doing as much for yourself. And on the fact that a WYSIWYG word processor is forced to incorporate 2-4 distinct functions (text editing, word processing, page layout, and perhaps some form of graphic editing). This places a great demands on that one program, especially if it's expected to all run on old systems like PCs with 8 bit CPUs and less than a meg of memory. > But the main point is that you shouldn't think that one program is > going to fill all of your desktop publishing needs. -- Dave Haynie "The B2000 Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy "I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!" ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop-request Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sun