chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/01/87)
Desktop Publishing Archive #8
Subject:
Atari ST publishing software & CES announcements
MacWorld Expo
Spring Announcements: Books in Your Future
Print: America's Graphic Design Magazine
Call for Papers: EP88
A question or two.... (3 msgs)
Word 3.0 comments (and possible bug) (2 msgs)
Xpress
Xpress Vs Word, and Mac Vs IBM (2 msgs)
an interesting book
desktop publishing on suns (2 msgs)
Interleaf Address
--------------------
From: mckay@ee.ecn.purdue.edu (Dwight D McKay)
Subject: Atari ST publishing software & CES announcements
Being an Atari ST owner, I've been waiting for some of the Mac-style
publishing tools to show up for my machine. Recently, Atari and a third
party software company have made announcements which indicate I might not
need to wait too much longer:
1) There is a product out called "publishing partner" for the ST. It supports
Apple LaserWriter and other postscipt printers over a serial line as well
as Epson printers in quad density graphics mode. (Epson-style printers
are the standard printer on the ST series) It is priced at $200.
2) At CES Atari announced a $1500 laser printer to be available later this
year. It has *no* controller, but is run completely from the recentl
announced 2 Meg ST via the built in DMA port. The laser is 300 dpi.
So far the marking engine manufacturer has not been mentioned.
3) The new ST models have been announced. Features:
- 68000 based, starting at $1000 for 1 Meg. RAM
- expandable to 16 Meg.
- 1 expansion slot with full bus (not included on previous models)
- seperate keyboard and CPU
- 720 K floppy
- slot for 20 Meg. harddisk ($700 extra)
I think the most interesting thing to note is that this represents a
*significant* drop in the buy-in price for a dtp system. One could
conceive of a complete system for about $3000; just a bit more than a
Mac Plus and an ImageWriter (from a computer store *not* on University
discount)
--------------------
From: korn%cory.Berkeley.EDU@berkeley.edu (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Subject: Re: MacWorld Expo
Please, PLEASE, let's not let a good desktop publishing forum degenerate
into a Mac vs. Atari vs. PC vs. xxx debate/mud-slinging match.
EVERY machine has it's strengths and weaknesses. Some are better
suited to desktop publishing than others (an intel 8088 just doesn't
cut it, I think we'll all agree). Some are better positioned in
the business community than others (it's very hard to compare to
the installed user base of MS-Dos machiens).
BUT... what does any of this have to do with the purpose of this
forum? Let's return to discussions of desktop publishing, ok?
--------------------
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Spring Announcements: Books in Your Future
Every few months, Publisher's Weekly prints a special issue where the
various houses announce their upcoming publishing lists. I've gone through
those lists (400 pages of announcemts) and extracted the books that looked
like they might be of interest to Mac folks. Since many of them are desktop
publishing books as well, I'm also sending this to the desktop publishing
mailing list.
A few notes:
Compiled lists from the 1/30/87 PW Spring Announcement Issue.
This is a list of upcoming books from Publisher's Weekly. Note that
schedules change, books disappear, and I've probably missed some
stuff. If this list isn't good enough for you, subscribe to PW on your
own... These lists are not complete, but just the line highlights
described and advertised in Publisher's Weekly. Note that if there are
multiple authros, I've only mentioned the first in an attempt to keep
my fingers from falling off.
This doesn't include the dozens of PC based books or things that might be
of interest to DTPer's that aren't specifically DTP books -- for instance,
North Light Books has a series of books on typefaces and graphic design
coming out that look interesting, but I didn't type them in.
Ballantine
Desktop Publishing by Jonathon Price. July, $19.95
Bantam
Publishing from the Desktop by John Seybold and Fritz Dressler.
February, $19.95
Using Aldus Pagemaker by Roger C. Parker. May, $19.95
Elsevier Science Publishing
The Electronic Era of Publishing by Oldrich Standera. June, $45.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Desktop Publishing: Type and Graphics by Deke McCleland. April, $6.95
The Third Apple: Personal Computers and the Cultural Revolution
by Jean Louis Gassee, March, $14.95
Microsoft Press
Working with Word by gordon McComb. July, $18.95
Music Through MIDI by Michael Boom. July, $19.95
The New Writer by Joan P. Mitchell. July, $14.95
The Advanced C Programmer's Book by Augie Hansen. August, $24.95
Osborne/McGraw Hill
Artificial Intelligence Using C by Herbert Schildt. March, $21.95
Microsoft Word 3.0 Made Easy (Mac version) by Paul Hoffman. March, $16.95
Prentice Hall/Brady Computer Books
Brady Manual of Spreadsheet Style by John Nevison. $12.95
Delphi: The complete Guide by Michael A. Banks. $19.95
Pagemaker for the Macintosh by Jan Lewis. $19.95
ReadySetGo for the Macintosh by David Kater. $19.95
Publishers Group West
The Macintosh Bible by Dale Coleman. February, $21.00
Que
C Standard Library. April
Scott, foresman and company
After you Get the Word: The complete guide to Microsoft Word
by B. Alperson. April, $19.95
Pagemaker by K. Strehlo. April, $21.95
Howard W. Sams & company
C primer plus, second edition by the Waite Group. March, $23.95
MacAccess: Information in Motion by Dean Gengle. January, $21.95
Tab Books
The Illustrated Handbook of Desktop Publishing and
Typesetting by Michael L. Kleper. $29.95
John Wiley and Sons
Desktop Publishing with Pagemaker by Tony Bove. June, $19.95
--------------------
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Print: America's Graphic Design Magazine
This is a publication review, of sorts...
One of the things I've found in trying to get my act together in the DTP
world is that it is easy to find books and magazines that tell me how to
use DTP software, but very difficult to find things that tell me how to use
them well.
The best trick, frankly is to simply look at as many magazines, newsletters,
books, pamphlets, and other printed thingies and see what makes them work
(and not work). you then borrow the things that work, and add them to your
publication.
I just ran into a new magazine that I think is of interest to people doing
layout/design work. Print is the trade magazine for the graphic design
industry. It is bi-monthly, $7.50 (!) an issue, $42/year subscription. It
is also gorgeous -- 130 pages of glossy, four color adwork, articles, and
graphics. Stunning is a good word, frankly, as the cream of the design
world show off for each other.
The magazine serves two purposes. Practically, it is a place where you can find
suppliers of various graphic materials for your work -- papers, inks, stock
photos, just about anything. It is also a great source of ideas. Each issue
you get to see what the state of the art in design is, and each issue should
give you ideas on how to improve your own work.
Subscriptions are available from:
RC Publications
355 Washington Ave.
New York, NY 10017
$42/year.
I happened to find my copy at a Waldenbooks, so you might look around and see
if they are available in your area. It is DEFINITELY worth looking at.
--------------------
From: Richard Furuta <furuta@brillig.umd.edu>
Subject: Call for Papers: EP88
An international conference on Electronic Publishing, Document
Manipulation and Typography will be held at Nice, France, on April
20--22, 1988. The Conference is being organized by INRIA, France, in
association with a number of sponsors. This conference may be
considered as a successor to the EP86 conference organized at the
University of Nottingham, England, on April 1986, by the British
Computer Society.
The conference will cover all aspects of computer document
preparation, text processing, and printing. It will include topics
such as document design, authoring systems, electronic publishing,
digital typography, and it will definitely be oriented to new ideas
and techniques on such matters. Papers, which should present original
research work or give a comprehensive survey of a particular area, are
invited on any new topic related to document processing, including the
following (but not limited to the following):
- Document structures (analysis and recognition)
- Document editors or formatters, integration of text,
graphics, and images
- Markup languages and translation from one to another
one
- Computer-based and dynamic documents
- Page description languages
- Interfaces with other software
- Expert systems for editing
- Specific documents (mathematics, chemistry, humanities,
music, exotic languages, ...)
- Electronic publishing---applications and techniques
- Linguistic approaches and semantic structures of text
The chairman of the conference is Jacques Andre (IRISA/INRIA) and the
vice-chairman is Brian Kernighan (Bell Laboratories). The program
committee also includes Patrick Baudelaire (TANGRAM), Richard Beach
(XEROX PARC), Charles Bigelow (Stanford University), David Brailsford
(University of Nottingham), Heather Brown (University of Kent),
Giovanni CORAY (EPFL), R. W. Davy (Chelgraph Ltd.), Richard Furuta
(University of Maryland), James Gosling (Sun Microsystems), Vania
Joloboff (Bull/INRIA), Peter King (University of Manitoba), Dario
Lucarella (Universita di Milano), Pierre Mackay (University of
Washington), Robert Morris (Interleaf/University of Massachusetts), J.
Nievergelt (University of North Carolina), Vincent Quint (INRIA/IMAG),
Brian Reid (DEC Western Research Center), Alan Shaw (University of
Washington), and Hans Van Vleit (CWI).
Main Deadlines:
===============
now Ask to be placed on the mailing list using the form below.
July 31, 1987 Papers to be received by the Program Committee
Chairman.
Oct. 31, 1987 Notification of acceptance and mailing of instructions
for preparation of the final paper.
Jan. 31, 1988 Final paper to be received by the Proceedings Editor
(Conference proceedings will be available at the
conference).
To be placed on the mailing list for this conference, please supply
the following information to:
Jacques Andre
IRISA/INRIA EP88
Campus de Beaulieu
F-35042 Rennes Cedex
FRANCE
or send relevant information by electronic mail to the Usenet address:
...mcvax!inria!irisa!jandre
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am interested in
( ) receiving further information | Name:
( ) submitting a paper | Address:
( ) attending the conference |
( ) exhibiting |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
From: CER2520@RITVAXC.bitnet
Subject: A question or two....
What magazines or newsletter is good in covering the Desktop Publishing? For
instance, what about Publish! magazine as advertised in MacWorld? What about
others that is worth mentioning?
Second, what good DTP service are recommended? I live in the Rochester, New
York area and there seems to be a strong competition for DTP. I heard from
analysts that the DTP is expected to grow to a couple hundred of million
dollars annually by end of 1989. Is that far fetched or an underestimate?
--------------------
From: KMcCarthy@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: Re: A question or two....
I have seen "Electronic Publishing and Printing". This magazine is not
worth the glossy paper it is printed on. There are some
semi-interesting product roundups, but the articles are very simple
minded and never live up to the promise of their titles. I have yet to
see any good magazines on the4 subject
--------------------
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Word 3.0 comments (and possible bug)
My word 3.0 is here, and I think if I can figure out where it is in
the documentation, I'll be able to get it to slice bread for me.
Like, wow. With the exception of outlining, which I think is disappointing,
I'm pretty impressed.
One word of warning: The new Word 3.0 format can NOT be read by Ready Set
Go 3.0. It tries, but fails with an error. This means that documents need
to be stored in Word 1.0 format (easy to do, fortunately) to import into
the layout program. I think it is safe to assume this problem will be
endemic among things that can read Word files until the new format propagates
out to the rest of the developers and they get new releases out.
The documentation is somewhat overwhelming. I'm still trying to digest it
all and figure out what it can do. I'm especially impressed with the fact
that they seem to have ported eqn to Word...
Possible bug: Last night I was reading through all the new tech notes, so
I was opening and converting a bunch of MacWrite files. The fourth time I
did this, it finished the conversion, but never brought up the converted
file in a window -- hung permanently. I finally had to crash the mac and
reboot. Once I did, no problem with that file. I need to see if this is
reproducable, but be warned.
--------------------
From: korn@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Subject: Re: Word 3.0 comments (and possible bug)
I've been playing with the pre-release copy of word for several weeks now,
and I've found that most crashes are non-destructive to the document they
crashed in. If you work with the debugger installed, many (most?) errors
can be treated with a "g" to the debugger, and then SAVE your document,
quit, restart, and work as normal.
Otherwise, WOW!!! Chuq, if you option-shift-command click in the title
bar of the first-footer, just 5 pixels of the center of the window title,
with the plus cursor, while you have the Define style sheet window open,
you'll find that the Word will even tie your shoes...(though maybe that's
just in the beta...) <grin>
--------------------
From: sunaus!sunk!richb (Rich Burridge)
Subject: Xpress
I've been away from this mailing list for about two months, so excuse me if
I'm asking something that was discussed then.
I've been given a writeup, on a Mac product called Xpress. From this writeup,
which I've taken extracts below, it looks very impressive. Has anybody seen
it yet, and can give us their impressions?
--------------
Xpress Feature Chart.
---------------------
Word Processing.
Integrated full featured word processor.
Global Search and replace.
Automatic / manual (soft) hyphenation with exception dictionary.
Left, right, center, and full justify.
Full justify will insert word spaces and character (micro) spacing with
user defined parameters.
Left, right, center, and decimal tabs.
User definable tab fill character.
Built-in spell checker.
Font sizes from 2 to 500 point.
Horizontal and vertical rulers and guides.
Step and repeat.
Text and graphics may be framed with any available border. A frame editor
is included to build your own.
Document may be displayed and edited in 50% reduced, 75% size, reduced to
fit, actual size, and 200% enlarged.
Document may be edited with pages sequential or facing pages displayed.
Even and Odd default pages.
Printing.
ImageWriter, ImageWriter II, LaserWriter and standard Postscript output
devices fully supported.
Color output supported on ImageWriter II.
Color separation supported on all output devices with optional registration
masks.
Thumbnails.
Design and Layout.
Automatic flow of text from column to column and page to page.
Automatic text runaround of objects and irregular graphics.
Automatic (using the Apple AFM files) kerning.
Manual kerning, visually and numerically in increments of 1/100 em space.
Tracking in increments of 1/100 em space.
Display and edit facing pages.
Horizontal text scaling.
Absolute and relative leading with 1/1000 point accuracy.
Documents may be any arbitrary or standard size up to 36" by 36"
All measurements and rules accepted and displayed in inches, centimeters,
points, or inches/points.
Text screening in 6 levels.
Color text.
Unlimited document size.
Imported text from Microsoft Word and MacWrite with all formatting intact,
and text file imports.
Graphics.
Graphics displayed in square, rectangular, rounded corner, and oval boxes
as well as free form shapes.
Graphics cropping-visually and numerically.
Graphics matting.
Graphics scaling, visually and numerically.
Imported graphics from MacPaint, PICT and TIFF format with full integrity.
Arrows and lines of any width, screen, and color easily created and
positioned within Xpress.
Rough print.
Print negatives / mirror images.
Variable screen density.
Other features.
Postscript commands and programs may be inserted directly into an Xpress
document.
Transfer between Xpress and the frame editor without accessing the finder.
On-line help available at all times.
Non-copy protected format.
From
Quark, Inc.
P.O. Box 10698,
Denver, Co. 80210,
Tel (303) 934-2211.
--------------------
From: starkweather.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: A question or two....
I think that for we "experts" in desktop pubs, the EP&P mag may not be
the epitome of information but there are many folks out there who are
relatively unschooled with respect to this new and burgeoning field. The
magazine is new, so give them some time and also maybe the office
employees who are not computer jocks need quick non-computer science
overviews. Maybe we want gourmet information but there may be many
non-techies who what "fast-food."
--------------------
From: seismo!rochester!kodak!grodberg (jeremy grodberg)
Subject: Xpress Vs Word, and Mac Vs IBM
Would anyone like to do a comparison of Xpress Vs the new Word? And,
ideology aside, would anyone like to take a crack at Mac VS IBM publishing?
I would be very interested in reading such reviews/comparisons, especially
since all I've heard about Xpress and Word is that they will both do everything
including making breakfast.
--------------------
From: 3comvax!ASD.3Com.COM!pj_moeller
Subject: RE: Xpress Vs Word, and Mac Vs IBM
We (3Com Software Division) have done both Mac & IBM DP. It's
pretty hard to compare Apples and Oranges (no pun intended).
MAC side: McWrite/Pagemaker/McDraw
IBM side: WordPerfect
It really boils down to a software comparison.
End product on both sides looks almost identical. In each case
we have the same type of running headers on each page, shaded
tabs on each right hand page, crop marks, electronic artwork (we
avoid paste-up), same grid (page layout and size).
PageMaker is easier to learn than WordPerfect. I don't have
graphics capability on IBM so lack WYSIWYG, but PageMaker
presents some equally challenging situations.
We can always explain whatever might happen within a WordPerfect
file, but not so with Pagemaker. Many times I feel I have
unintentionally entered the Twilight Zone when using PageMaker.
MAC is ahead of IBM in DP - for now. The potential market is
much too big for IBM and developers to continue to overlook.
--------------------
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: an interesting book
I ran into an interesting how-to book the other day (for people in the Bay
Area, it can be found at Computer Literacy). It is called "How to do Leaflets,
Newsletters, and newspapers" by Nancy Brigham, PEP Publishers, Boston, $14.95.
This book is designed to give someone who has never put together printed
materials a head start and give them a good chance to get it out the door. It
was originally written to help out a Union Local newsletter/publicity group,
but if you ignore the occasional "make sure your printer is a union shop"
comment, it is applicable to anyone. It goes into pretty good detail about
various kinds of publications, dealin with printers, how to put together
publication schedules, and all the background material that doesn't seem to
be covered in most publications. It does some (rather conservative) design
discussion. It doesn't cover DTP at all, but the material is easily
translatable. If you can track down a copy, take a look. It could give you
some hints on things you hadn't caught before.
--------------------
From: dsc@seismo.CSS.GOV (David S. Comay)
Subject: desktop publishing on suns
we are thinking of purchasing a desktop publishing system here at the
center and i would appreciate hearing comments on the various systems
available that run on suns (we mostly have four megabyte 3/50s). i
know of three systems, interleaf, framemaker and omnipage, that are
available on the sun, but i would like to find out what other systems
are available.
--------------------
From: dirk@words (Dirk van Nouhuys)
Subject: Re: desktop publishing on suns
A old/new entry in this field is DocuPro, which made its most recent
debut at the recent Seybold Conference. DocPro used to be ViewTech and
has been under development with various vicissitudes of company
reorganization and changes in hardware for over four years. When I saw it
last summer it was very strong in graphic arts aspects, something an
add agency might be happy with, somewhat weaker in word processing
aspects. In the past it has not communicated well with its UNIX
environment, but the marketeer that called me yesterday assure me it
would run nicely in a window in a Suntools environment and that file
transfer from UNIX text files was now easy. Call Austin Ford:
(415) 960-1214
620-B Clyde ave
Mountain View, CA 94043
The Seybold Report,
(215) 565-2480
Box 644 Media PA 19063
is the bible of this business if you want to read more.
--------------------
From: Steve Dennett <DENNETT@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Subject: Interleaf Address
Does anyone have the current mailing address for Interleaf, the
company that makes dtp software for Suns, etc.? Thanks.
---------------------------------------------
Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com
administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com
[this is the last archive!]
Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM [I don't read flames]
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity