chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (04/30/87)
Desktop Publishing Archive #3
Subjects:
Context Info ?? (3 messages)
Request for TeX source
Re: Tex
How to get TeX. (2 messages)
Extra large screen for Mac (2 messages)
Sun manuals, Frame and PostScript. (5 messages)
Re: Sun manuals
Postscript & Frame (3 messages)
SUN DTP S/W
--------------------
From: wicinski <wicinski@nrl-cst.arpa>
Subject: Context Info ??
It seems that the DTP realm is broken up into two areas - people
producing up to thirty pages per document of output (as in our
immoderators case) and people producing large structured documents.
That's my area, working for the Navy, we're trying to find ways to
automate the documentation process, since that is usually the most
expensive on any project, especially a software project.
In any project, the major product is documentation. And the
documentation should not be viewed as a bunch of large documents,
but a collection of smaller portions of documents, stored in a manner
where they can be retireved and inserted into any document at any time.
We are looking for pointers for systems which allow a user to manipulate
documents in such a manner (i.e., a large document is really a
collection of smaller documents). One person is Context, which has an
expensive (15K per node) system for producing such documents. They seem
to be Apollo based, and include CM, and graphics, and hooks for CAD
tools. If anything else exists (I just received the posting on Frame Maker)
I'd like to hear about it.
We sent someone to the Corporate Electronic Publishing show in Boston
last week, and it was disappointing. There were many systems based on
IBM-PC's, and there were lots of closed systems (like Bedford systems,
et al), but there was very little at the Workstation (Sun, Apollo, etc)
level. I would think that would be a open market for a product.
--------------------
Subject: Re: Context Info ??
From: Wax.OsbuSouth@Xerox.COM
"We are looking for pointers for systems which allow a user to
manipulate documents in such a manner (i.e., a large document is really
a collection of smaller documents). One person is Context, which has
an expensive (15K per node) system for producing such documents. They
seem to be Apollo based, and include CM, and graphics, and hooks for
CAD tools. If anything else exists (I just received the posting on
Frame Maker) I'd like to hear about it."
I don't want to raise the ire of those who have already complained about
commercialism in this group but I would like to respond to this request.
Xerox offers its 6085+4045 ViewPoint/Documentor system which I think
retails for under $10K List {I am not a salesman so I do not know the
details}. It contains features for items called "Books" that are a
collection of documents which are page numbered together and on which
you can generate a common table of contents and Index. The systems
theoretically handles as much of a document as you have available disk
pages for and will produce these Books as single documents to the
printer. Documents can be printed while others are being composed /
edited.
"For more details, contact your local Xerox rep."
If the local rep. does not know what your talking about, contact the
Corporation; they like to hear about such things and will put you in
contact with someone that does know. Then they contact the person who
didn't know and let him know ... .
--------------------
From: frame!djm
Subject: Re: Context Info ??
A long range goal of Frame is to do exactly what you want. However Frame
Maker 1.0 does not treat "a large document..as a collection of smaller
documents." The version that does so is on the order of one year away.
--------------------
From: Steve Lademann <mcvax!miduet!steve@seismo.CSS.GOV>
Subject: Request for TeX source
Having just read the TeX digest, you've convinced me. How do I get a
copy of the Public Domain version? We are in the process of installing
an HP Laserjet+ printer. Are there any post processors for it? Bearing
in mind that I'm in uk, are these sources available over here?
(Excuse me if I'm asking for stuff that's been asked for recently.
Only just joined this mailing list. Volume of traffic is *enormous*
and jammed with useful stuff. Keep up the good work!)
--------------------
From: Clayton M. Elwell <elwell@ohio-state.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Tex
It sounds like JustText has the same kind of output capabilities as TeX
(although TeX will talk to many more output devices), which makes it
interesting. TeX will do more for you automatically, though, which is
pretty important for complex layouts. The biggest problem with TeX is that
it is BIG. A medium-sized implementation (decent amounts of font memory,
etc.) needs about 800K of memory on a 68000. This barely fits on a mac Plus,
although it works real nice on a Sun/3.
If I can find a dealer or someone who has it, I'll have to take a look at
JustText.
--------------------
From: Clayton M. Elwell <elwell@ohio-state.ARPA>
Subject: How to get TeX.
This is a direct quote from the TeX User's Group Newsletter (the TUGboat);
It's reprinted without permission but I doubt they will mind much :-).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The latest official versions of TeX software and documents are available from
Maria Code by special arrangement with the Computer Science Department of Stan-
ford University.
Ten different tapes are available. The generic distribution tape contains the
source of TeX82, WEB, and the latest (prototype) version of WEB METAFONT, stan-
dard test programs for TeX and METAFONT, a few "change" files, the collection
of fonts in TFM format, and other miscellaneous materials; a Pascal compiler
will be required to install programs from a generic tape. The TeX distribution
tapes include the AMS-TeX, LaTeX, and HP TeX macro packages; other macro pack-
ages will be added as they become available. The special distribution tapes are
for the indicated systems only, and should be ordered for these systems instead
of a generic tape. Two tapes are PXL font collections covering various magni-
fications at 200/240 dots/inch and 300 dots/inch respectively.
Each tape will be a separate 1200 foot reel which you may send in advance or
purchase (for the tape media) at $10.00 each. Should you senda tape, you will
receive back a different tape. Tapes may be ordered in ASCII or EBCDIC charac-
ters. All tapes are 1600 bpi.
The tape price of $82.00 for the first tape and $62.00 for each additional tape
(ordered at the same time) covers the cost of duplication, order processing,
domestic postage and some of the costs at Stanford University. Extra postage is
required for first class or export.
Manuals are available at the approximate cost of duplication and mailing.
Prices for manuals are subject to change as revisions and additions are made.
Please send a money order or check (drawn on a US bank) along with your order
if possible. Your purchase order will be accepted, as long as you are able to
make payment within 30 days of shipment. Make checks payable to Maria Code.
The order form contains a place to record the name and address of the person
who will actually use the TeX tapes. This should *not* be someone in the
purchasing department.
Your order will be filled with the mopst recent versions of the software and
manuals available from Stanford at the time your order is received. If you are
waiting for a specific release, please indicate this. Orders are normally
filled within a few days. There may be periods (like short vacations) when it
will take longer. You will be notified of any serious delays. If you want to
inquire about your order you may call Maria Code at (408) 735-8006 between
9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. West Coast time.
If you have any questions regarding the implementation of TeX or the like, you
must take these to Stanford University or some other friendly TeX user.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tex82 Order Form
TAPES:
TeX generic distribution tapes (Pascal compiler required):
________ ASCII format* ________ EBCDIC format
TeX distribution tapes in special formats:
________ VAX/VMS Backup format* ________ IBM VM/CMS format
________ DEC20/Tops-20 Dumper format* ________ IBM MVS format**
*includes WEB METAFONT **Not yet available; call before ordering
Font tapes:
________ Font library (200/240 dpi) ________ Fonts for IBM 4250
________ Font library (300 dpi) ________ Fonts for IBM 6670
________ Total number of tapes
Tape costs: $82.00 for first tape; $62.00 for each additional.
TAPE COST = $_____________
Media costs: $10.00 for each tape required MEDIA COST = $_____________
MANUALS:
________ TeX: The Program - $28.00 ________ A Torture Test for TeX - $8.00
________ WEB - $10.00 ________ TeXware - $8.00
________ TeXbook - $20.00 ________ LaTeX - $20.00
________ BibTeX - $10.00
MANUALS COST = $___________
California orders only: add sales tax = $___________
Domestic book rate: no charge.
Domestic first class: $2.50 per tape or manual
Export surface mail: $2.50 per tape or manual
Export air mail (Canada/mexico): $4.00 per tape or manual
Export air mail (Europe): $7.00 per tape or manual
Export air mail (other): $10.00 per tape or manual
POSTAGE COST = $____________
(Make checks payable to Maria Code) TOTAL ORDER = $____________
Name and address for shipment: Contact person (if different):
______________________________________ ______________________________________
______________________________________ ______________________________________
______________________________________ ______________________________________
______________________________________ ______________________________________
Telephone: ___________________________
Send to: Maria Code, DP Services, 1371 Sydney Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94087, USA
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
From: srm%iris.Berkeley.EDU@BERKELEY.EDU (Richard Mateosian)
Subject: Extra large screen for Mac
About a week ago I heard a talk by Andy Herzfeld about Servant, his new
version of the finder, switcher, etc. In passing he mentioned, since he
wasn't able to bring along a demo, a product that he'd been working on
with a company called Radius. It's a slightly larger than 8.5 by 11 inch
screen for the Mac, which is used in addition to the regular screen. (E.g,
you can drag things off one screen and onto the other, keep your document
on the big screen and your tool menu on the usual one, etc.) There were
many interesting details, which I won't repeat.
--------------------
From: korn%cory.Berkeley.EDU@BERKELEY.EDU (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Subject: Re: Extra large screen for Mac
One particular on the Radis screen that might be of interest is cost, which
(if I recall corectly) is $1,995 or so.
--------------------
From: Richard Furuta <furuta@mimsy.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: How to get TeX.
If you are running a Berkeley Unix machine, you will want to
get the Unix TeX distribution rather than the Maria Code
distribution. To get this, send a check for $75 made to
the University of Washington ($85 in U.S. funds if you are
outside of the US) to
Pierre MacKay
Computer Science, FR-35
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
Pierre's electronic mail addresses are mackay@washington.arpa
and ihnp4!uw-beaver!uw-june!mackay.
Pierre cannot take purchase orders---it must be a check. Ask him about
special arrangements if you cannot read standard magnetic tape---for example
if you can only read Sun streamer tape.
--------------------
Subject: Sun manuals, Frame and PostScript.
From: munnari!yarra.OZ!richb@seismo.CSS.GOV
I guess this should be individually mailed to certain people, but I would
like to express some opinions and ask some questions regarding the above,
and hopefully get opinions and answers from several people in turn.
Sun Australia (who I work for), are not part of Sun Corporate, they are a
distributor of Sun for Australia and are part of the Lionel Singer Group.
We have in the past received master sets of Sun manuals from SMI and copied
them locally in Oz for shipment to customers. I would like to know (and I
guess this question should be answered by somebody like Joe Heinrich)
exactly how Sun produce their voluminous set of manuals. This is more than
"desktop publishing" I realise, but I am curious to know if it's handled
in-house and if so what software is used. This also might help us produce
cheaper and better quality manuals here.
Now Frame. We have the prototype version. I am impressed. I've typeset
a 35 page manual for a recent software product using it and have been able
to achieve an output format similar to the Sun manuals, which I like.
I've listed below some of the things I would like to see in a future version.
They might be there now, and I'm just ignorant of how to use them. If that is
so, could somebody please enlighten me. David Murray perhaps?
o I would have liked to be able to copy a complete page to another (newly
inserted page). Several pages in a document might be almost the same
except for very small details.
o To be able to retain the last graphics item and create another one,
without having to go back to the tool menu and select it again.
o To be able to select several items then delete them with one key press
I also consider essential.
o A status window, containing current font, point size, style etc...
I'm not being negative. I've seen several DP packages and find this one very
good. I like to see how it hacks a 200 page manual. I assume the best way
would be to divide it up into chapters. Perhaps a "kind of database" that
controls these individual chapters would be useful.
Onto PostScript. It's certainly the right sort of solution for high quality
output. I'm not going to say whether it's better than Interpress et al.
I don't know enough about them to honestly compare them.
What I don't like is the rather steep price Adobe licence their software at.
There is an Australian laser printer (A4 size) which sells for about
$4000 Australian (about 50 yen :-). These people are reticent about investing
so much money in getting Postscript implemented with it.
I've thought about this. It seems there is an alternative solution. What is
needed is a piece of software that will interpret PostScript commands and
generate in computer memory a raster image (to the quality of the intended
output device). When all the PS commands have been interprets this is then
downloaded in image format to the laser printer. Thats an awful load of
bytes. Perhaps it can be compressed. Quite often the majority of a laser
print is white anyway. With high speed connections like Ethernet this seems
to be a plausible solution.
So, please can the experts tell me what I'm missing. How difficult is it?
--------------------
From: henry@angel (Henry McGilton)
Subject: Re: Sun manuals, Frame and PostScript.
Subject: Sun manuals, Frame and PostScript.
From: munnari!yarra.OZ!richb@seismo.CSS.GOV
I can answer at least part of the question:
We have in the past received master sets of Sun manuals from
SMI and copied them locally in Oz for shipment to customers. I
would like to know (and I guess this question should be
answered by somebody like Joe Heinrich) exactly how Sun produce
their voluminous set of manuals. This is more than "desktop
publishing" I realise, but I am curious to know if it's handled
in-house and if so what software is used. This also might help
us produce cheaper and better quality manuals here.
We generate our voluminous set of manuals using device-independent
troff as the core of the formatting system. We use pic to define
pictures, tbl to lay out tables, eqn to lay out equations. We have a
home-grown utility to do cross references to the chapter, section, table
and figure (sorry -- no page references as yet). We use a home-grown
utility to do the spadework of generating the index. We use some
postprocessing steps using the regular old UNIX tools to generate the
tables of contents and halftitles untouched by human hand. We use more
home-grown tools to generate screen images and print them in the manuals.
We are bringing various tools in house to integrate images and drawings
and such.
We are actively searching for a way to get out from under troff. As yet,
we haven't found such a way. As of today, none of the
What-You-See-Is-All-You-Get-Because-That-Is-What-They-Decided-Was-Good-Enough
systems can do what we do now, and aren't addressing things we want to do
but can't.
--------------------
From: joeh@eclipse (Joe Heinrich)
Subject: Re: Sun manuals
Rich:
RE: ``We have in the past received master sets of Sun
manuals from SMI and copied them locally in Oz for
shipment to customers. I would like to know (and I
guess this question should be answered by somebody
like Joe Heinrich) exactly how Sun produce their
voluminous set of manuals. This is more than "desktop
publishing" I realise, but I am curious to know if
it's handled in-house and if so what software is used.
This also might help us produce cheaper and better
quality manuals here.'' [Rich Burridge]
Yes, we use our own software.
We produce the Docubox by printing docs off a laserwriter
(actually, we've got a lot of laserwriters for use in our
Tech Pubs group) and then sending the printout as
camera-ready copy to be offset and bound at some
printer's back east (J D Cloer, jd@ovation.sun.com, han-
dles the publishing end of it).
To get this camera-ready copy, Henry McGilton and Bill
Tuthill extensively revised troff's ``-msun'' macro pack-
age to give us the present format of our manuals: half-
titles, leading chapter-pages, and all the rest of it.
This revised macro package is called ``-mex'' (for ``m''
``ex''perimental, I guess) and since the modifications
were many and extensive, the -mex package is NOT sup-
ported outside of Tech Pubs. Henry (henry@angel.sun.com)
or Bill (tut@cairo.sun.com) can tell you a lot more about
the package than I know or can.
--------------------
From: klinner@drseuss (Kent Klinner)
Subject: Postscript & Frame
Rich,
Why don't you buy a Laserwriter from Apple? It's as cheap or cheaper
than the Australian model that you mentioned and it includes a
Postscript engine.
I've heard that Adobe is preparing a Postscript engine for the
Macintosh that will paint either the screen or an arbitrary bit map. That
would allow you to generate the raster image in the Mac then download
it to whatever printer you're using. At any rate, the Postscript
language and imaging model is simple enough that a third party
development firm should be able to develop their own Postscript
interpreter without too much trouble. Aldus did just that for their
PageMaker product.
I've heard that Frame will allow you to paste raster images into a
document. I have a pre-beta version of Frame, but I haven't figured
out how to do this yet.
One more suggestion for Frame: I wish the selection mechanism would
allow arbitrary rectangular selections. This is very useful when,
for example, you want to select a column of text from a table
without also getting the surrounding blocks of text.
--------------------
From: frame!djm
Subject: Re: Sun manuals, Frame and PostScript.
Here are answers to munnari!yarra.OZ!richb's questions about Frame Maker:
o I would have liked to be able to copy a complete page to another (newly
inserted page). Several pages in a document might be almost the same
except for very small details.
This can be done easily in Version 1 (which you do not yet have). In
version .6 you can do it as follows: Select all objects on the completed
page (you can do this in one step using "marquee" selection as described
on page 15 of the Reference Manual). Group the selected objects (p. 65).
Create a temporary new document to act as a clipboard (p.19). Copy the
grouped objects from the completed page to the clipboard document (p. 65).
Add the new page to your original document, go to that page, and copy the
grouped objects from the clipboard to the new page. You can keep the
clipboard document around and copy from it again as you need new pages. You
can also keep different page templates on different pages in the template
document, and copy the appropriate ones as needed. In this sense, the
clipboard document is like the Mac Scrapbook.
In version 1 you can just select the entire page, copy it, add the new page,
and then paste.
o To be able to retain the last graphics item and create another one,
without having to go back to the tool menu and select it again.
There is no way to do this in version 0.6. Version 1 has an option to
keep the drawing tool for drawing several objects in a row, and you can
copy a shape and then paste it in when ever you need another. Finally there
is a quick-copy feature where you can simply point at an existing object and
drag a copy of it (as in Macpaint quick-copy).
o To be able to select several items then delete them with one key press
I also consider essential.
In version 1 you can do this in one key press. In 0.6 you can do it in
one mouse click: select the objects to delete, then click on the Erase command
in the Tools window.
o A status window, containing current font, point size, style etc...
Will be in a later release, not in version 1.
I like to see how it hacks a 200 page manual.
Version 0.6 will not do well on documents much over 50 pages. Version
1 should handle documents of over 300 pages. I personally would work
with such a document in chapters. Later versions of Frame Maker will allow
for large documents to be created that are really collections of smaller
documents.
Thanks for the interest and the positive comments. David.
--------------------
From: adobe!greid
Subject: Re: Postscript & Frame
> I've heard that Adobe is preparing a Postscript engine for the
> Macintosh that will paint either the screen or an arbitrary bit map. That
> would allow you to generate the raster image in the Mac then download
> it to whatever printer you're using. At any rate, the Postscript
> language and imaging model is simple enough that a third party
> development firm should be able to develop their own Postscript
> interpreter without too much trouble. Aldus did just that for their
> PageMaker product.
I should clarify things a bit, here, I'm afraid. I think that the
finer shade of meaning here is something called "previewing". Neither
Adobe nor anyone else that I know of is working on a PostScript engine
to prepare bitmaps on a host computer and download the bitmaps to any
printer. That defeats the point of PostScript as a device-independent
page description language. If you want bitmaps, you can use MacPaint.
What *is* becoming more of an issue, and in fact what Aldus may well be
working on, is a way to be able to *preview* a PostScript file in a
WYSIWIG system. This will allow the inclusion of arbitrary PostScript
files in a document with some rudimentary ability to "see" the image
first. The original PostScript that is being previewed still gets sent
to the printer, but the previewing would allow for a better interface.
In order to have the capability of previewing any arbitrary PostScript
file, you would have to write a full PostScript interpreter. However,
PostScript files that conform to certain structuring conventions can
be "mocked up" much more easily in a previewing environment, and I
believe that this is the sort of approach that you may find people
working on.
Frame's ability to paste in raster images will probably allow inclusion of
bitmap images created in many different ways, and if Frame is indeed
targeting its output for PostScript printers, this will undoubtedly
mean the use of the PostScript "image" operator.
--------------------
From: ssp@polar (S.Page)
Subject: Re: Postscript & Frame
> At any rate, the Postscript
> language and imaging model is simple enough that a third party
> development firm should be able to develop their own Postscript
> interpreter without too much trouble. Aldus did just that for their
> PageMaker product.
You're confusing a PostScript ``driver'' with the PostScript
interpreter and imaging model. The former is just a bunch of
PostScript procedures like drawsometext, putaboxup, etc. that you
define and some code that takes your application's graphics+text and
converts them into PostScript that calls these procedures (... that
finally print the stuff when sent to a PostScript-equipped printer).
Anyone can do it by buying the wonderful PostScript Reference and
Tutorial/Cookbook books from Addison-Wesley. Apple came up with a
driver to convert Quickdraw calls to PostScript; Aldus was smart and
directly convert their own page representation to PostScript.
The latter (implementing the PostScript interpreter and imaging model)
is incredibly difficult. No one but Adobe has a PostScript interpreter
running, although a few research implementations are in progress.
--------------------
From: Gene Hall <ihnp4!datacube!gene>
Subject: SUN DTP S/W
I am currently evaluating Interleaf, FrameMaker, and OmniPage publishing
software on our Sun-3. OmniPage is looking real good, but I havn't
heard anyone talking about it. I found it at the CEPS show two weeks
ago in Boston. It does Sun windows, supports PostScript output, allows
the user to customize the package by means of its own macro language.
Anyone out there had any experience with OmniPage?
Anyone out there heard anything (good/bad) about OmniPage?
--------------------
Subject: Re: Sun Manuals, Postscript and Frame.
From: munnari!yarra.OZ!richb@seismo.CSS.GOV
Thanks to Henry McGilton and Joe Heinrich, for the detailed description of
how Sun produce their manuals.
As an aside, before I used Frame to typeset a manual (in Sun manual format), I
attempted to use troff to achieve the same affect. This particular effect is
the "two column" look of section number and heading in one column and the
associated text in the other. I assume this is easily reproduced with one of
the -mex macros. Anyway I managed to achieve the same effect using tbl, but
when you are trying to do this through the whole manual, it's rather a lot of
tables :-)
Kent Klinner (seismo!sun!klinner@munnari.oz) writes:
>Why don't you buy a Laserwriter from Apple? It's as cheap or cheaper
>than the Australian model that you mentioned and it includes a
>Postscript engine.
This is indeed a good solution. Unfortunately there is a large difference in
the price for the LaserWriter in the US and Oz, what with the poor value of the
Aussie dollar and the sales tax placed on the equipment. To a smaller degree,
you would experience a similar sort of thing if you tried to get the Australian
model in the US.
>I've heard that Frame will allow you to paste raster images into a
>document. I have a pre-beta version of Frame, but I haven't figured
>out how to do this yet.
It would appear there is more than one prototype version of Frame. I have
seen two. The later one has a larger Demo.doc document (17 pages) and would
appear to give you slightly more functionality.
Many thanks to David Murray for the answers to the Frame specific questions.
I am looking forward to seeing version 1.0.
I think Glenn Reid and S. Page confirmed my feelings regarding the potential
ability to interpret a Postscript file and store the result as a raster image.
In short it would be nice, but should be considered as extremely difficult.
---------------------------------------
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Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com
Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM [I don't read flames]
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity