chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (04/29/87)
Desktop Publishing Archive #1
Subjects:
Welcome to the desktop publishing mailing list! (2 msgs)
Software for the Mac (4 messages)
Speaking of software for publishing... (6 messages)
TOC, index on Unix
Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
More on Production Support of Large, Structured Documents
TeX
What you want is under development at MIT.
Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
--------------------
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 86 09:41:22 PDT
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Welcome to the desktop publishing mailing list!
Welcome to the desktop publishing mailing list! The response to this
has been overwhelming -- 125 signed up in less than a week! It definitely
looks like there is a lot of interest out there. From the mail I got, a
lot of people are very active in these new technologies, so I expect there
will be a lot of interesting discussions coming down the pipe.
The mailing list has been set up as a straight pass-through for now. If
this gets to be too much trouble I'll step in and moderate a little more
actively. Please keep me informed if you have problems with the volume or
content.
I've set up two aliases on my machine. Submissions should go to the
address "dtp%plaid@sun.com" [aka dtp@plaid, sun!plaid!dtp] and administrivia
should go to "dtp-request" at the above variations.
There seem to be three major areas of interest:
o Macs -- Lots of people are using Macs, thinking about using Macs, or
trying to figure out what the Mac is good for.
o PCs -- PC DTP was a small minority, which surprised me, considering the
number of machines out there. Still there is a group of people
using them.
o Suns -- there are a number of Interleaf users out there, and people (in
general) using larger machines for document and manual preparation.
What belongs in the group
Anything that has to do with DTP, of course -- software and hardware
reviews, product announcements, whatever. I'm particularly interested in
things like references on layout design, graphic material, and tips on what
to do after you get all the programs working. Perhaps we might even want
to exchange clipart and other graphic material in the future.
Why We're Here
For background, let me try to explain why I'm doing this. About a year ago
I decided to publish a monthly magazine electronically on the network (it is
available in the newsgroup mod.mag.otherrealms, for those interested). My
interest at that time was to try to find ways to make the information being
distributed on USENET more accessible. This led to a new interest in
layout and readability of material. I quickly hit the limit of
what I could do on the network, and I felt I wanted to explore further
into layout design, so I started working on OtherRealms on paper. I quickly
outgrew my then current technologies (primarily Microsoft Word on the Mac)
so I invested in some real layout software (MacPublisher II).
As it stands, I'm publishing about 30 pages a month of SF and Fantasy
reviews as well as fiction, both electronically and on paper. The first
issue of OtherRealms to come through MacPublisher II is in layout right now,
and will be available around the end of September. I'm fascinated in general
with the new technologies, and I'm running around learning as much as I can
about the details of layout.
My setup consists of the following: Mac 512K, Paradise 10Meg HD,
MacPublisher II, Fullpaint, Microsoft Word, and a Thunderscanner. I'm just
starting to explore the possibility of graphics and the scanner, and I
expect graphics will play an increasing part in OtherRealms over time.
A few final comments
Before I got into this, I never realized how important the look of the
words was. This, I think, is the key to DTP -- that the words themselves
are as important as what they say. I'm looking forward to sharing my
discoveries with you, and hearing what you have to say.
--------------------
Date: 5 Sep 86 15:55:42 PDT (Friday)
Subject: Re: Welcome to the desktop publishing mailing list!
From: Wax.OsbuSouth@Xerox.COM (Alan Wax)
You forgot to mention in the list of desktop publishing systems the one
offered by Xerox. It uses a Xerox 6085 coupled with a Xerox 4045
Laser Printer, and produces publication quality material very quickly.
There are a bunch of them out there and thousands a month get purchased.
It is aimed at the higher end of publishing {relative to the Mac} and
consequently cost more than a Mac with a laserwriter but not by that
much.
"For more information, contact your local Xerox representative".
{The opinions expressed in this document are my own and don't represent
... um? .. ah .. Xerox.
You know Xerox; that's the company that Apple stole their icon
interface for the mac from}
--------------------
From: pyuxaa!duncan (s.p.duncan)
Date: 8 Sep 1986 7:37 EDT
Subject: Software for the Mac
This is a request for opinions about desktop publishing software for the Mac.
I have been putting out some small newsletters (4-5 double-sided pages) using
MacPaint for a few years. I'd like to know more about people's experiences
with other software. In particular, the 'big three': MacPublisher, PageMaker,
and ReadySetGo. All reviews I read make them sound very much alike other than
for price as I have heard reviews that claim each of them are "easy to use" and
have "most" of the features one needs.
I don't need anything much fancier than what I can do with MacPaint but I'd
like to be able to do columns easily AND text blocks that can be reshaped and
edited effectively. I have not have a very pleasant time doing this using
MacWrite and then trying to paste it into MacPaint. Perhaps MacWrite (or Word)
with either FullPaint (or what I've seen of SuperPaint) would be better?
Also, I have an Imagewriter I and little chance of access to a LaserWriter. I
do have a plain 512K also (no Extended or Plus).
--------------------
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Re: Software for the Mac
I looked at all three pretty closely before I bought MacPublisher II. All
of the packages have their strengths and weaknesses.
ReadySetGo is the cheapest of the packages, and the weakest from the DTP
point of view. People who use it have told me that it is best for 1 to 2
page one-shot freeform layouts. It doesn't support dummy pages. It seems
to be suited more for ad layout that newsletters.
PageMaker is a great program, it seems to be solid, lots of people use
it and like it, and it does almost everything you want. It's drawback
to me is price. MacPublisher II does most of what PageMaker does, and
a few things (like kerning) that it doesn't yet do. It is
significantly cheaper, but the tradeoff for this is complexity. PM has
a lot of work put into it to make it intuitive and easy for the novice
to use (without hindering the power user). MPII is complex and can be
very non-intuitive. After almost a month of beating on it, I still
keep the quick reference sheets next to the terminal and refer to them
often. On the plus side, the MPII documentation set is GOOD, one of
the best I've seen for the Mac.
All of them seem to do well what people want of them. If you're coming from
MacPaint (argh!) anything will be a definite improvement. Be aware that
the programs are not stand-alone. You'll need a Word Processor (I use word,
macwrite would be fine) and a Paint program (I have Fullpaint) to augment
the layout program.
MPII, by the way, works fine with an Imagewriter. All of them do, from what
I've told. It IS amazing how good the output of an Imagewriter can be with
a little work...
--------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 86 13:36:10 cdt
From: Jeff Myers <myers@unix.macc.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Software for the Mac
> ReadySetGo is the cheapest of the packages, and the weakest from the DTP
> point of view. People who use it have told me that it is best for 1 to 2
> page one-shot freeform layouts. It doesn't support dummy pages. It seems
> to be suited more for ad layout that newsletters.
I would disagree with this assessment. I purchased RSG 2.1 about 9 months
ago, and have been quite pleased with it. I've done an eighty page
directory of Madison justice and peace groups, lots of flyers, and have
just started doing an 8 page monthly calendar/newsletter.
While it is true that RSG doesn't have dummy pages in the same sense as
does PageMaker, the insert page/copy command has the same effect (nearly).
You can insert a new page, and specify that it is to be an exact copy of
the current page, which is in some ways better and some worse than dummy
pages.
If you are doing a document repeatedly over time (like a newsletter), you
can just set up a template file, which has all the special stuff you always
have on the first page, masthead on the last page, etc.
I haven't yet had a chance to play with MacPublisherII, but from what I've
read, I still think that RSG is unbeatable at $99.
--------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 86 16:10:06 pdt
From: jbarry@rambaud (John Barry)
Subject: Re: Software for the Mac
The latest version of RSG has increased dramatically in price from $99; I
forget what the new price is.
--------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 13:39:08 PDT
From: joeh@eclipse (Joe Heinrich)
Subject: Speaking of software for publishing...
How about a *real* publishing package? I mean one
that:
<> can handle RealWorld-sized files (200 Kbyte
chapters in a 4 Mbyte book);
<> can keep track of running headings and foot-
ings;
<> can paginate on the fly;
<> can provide previews;
<> can keep running track of page numbers;
<> can keep running count of figure numbers and
tables;
<> can interleave text and illustrations
interactively;
<> CAN GENERATE TABLES OF CONTENTS, TABLES OF
TABLES/FIGURES!
<> CAN GENERATE (expletive deleted) INDICES!
AND THAT'S JUST THE BEGINNING OF WHAT I WOULD NEED!
Unfortunately, most publishing packages seemed
designed to satisfy the lowest-common denomina-
tion. Let's face it, Mac just don't cut it. (Or
does the nomen ``desktop'' by definition restrict
the package to memos, et al.?)
--------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 15:03:52 pdt
From: well!mp-dixie!glen@lll-crg.ARPA (Glen Rotan)
Subject: Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
I don't think most packages are designed for the lowest common denominator,
I believe they are just not aimed at the market you are interested in.
Publishing systems are divided into 3 main areas:
1. "Professional" systems
2. Manual generators
3. News letter generators
The professional systems are aimed at graphic artists and type setters, and
are not easy to use, nor do most people want this type of a package. Those
who do are usually people in the publishing industry. News letter generators
are aimed at producing small "news papers", generally a few pages long. Most
desktop publishing software is of this type.
From your description I would say you need a manual generator. These are
really overgrown word processors that allow graphics in the document, front
matter and back matter to be generated, and many other things most WPs don't
do. They are usually somewhere between a WP and a typesetter, with a few
things added that neither has.
Currently, the I don't know of any DTP software of the type you want on the
market. Xerox bought Ventura which had such a product, and it will probably
get to market sooner or later. The smallest system I know of that does what
you are describing is an RT running Interleaf. The RT version of Interleaf
is not the most current one though. For what you are describing you are
looking at about 15K to 30K including the computer. At 30K, you could also
include some of the low end typesetters, as they may do a lot of what you want.
--------------------
From: adobe!greid (Glenn Reid)
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 16:12:35 pdt
Subject: Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
Your question paints a pretty good picture of the Scribe document
formatting system, which is not available on a Macintosh, as far as I
know, but it supports PostScript, which makes it part of the OfficeFloor
Publishing revolution. It deals very elegantly with all of the problems
that you describe. Perhaps it will be available someday on a micro.
--------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 16:48:37 PDT
From: joeh@eclipse (Joe Heinrich)
Subject: Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
Alan:
I've used Bravo on an Alto and Star on a Dan-
delion, from 1980 to 1984, so I am unequipped to
speak about any of Xerox's products after 1984.
This said--
Pagination was *horrid*. A document of, say
thirty pages, took up to *ten* minutes to
paginate. And you had to run the document through
the paginator every time you made any sort of
change AND YOU HAD TO PAGINATE IT BEFORE YOU COULD
EVEN PREVIEW THE DOCUMENT. Has Viewpoint
corrected this?
Is Xerox finally going to support things like Doo-
dle and Draw (or their follow-ons)?
There was no facility for tables of contents.
They had to be hand-made, by looking at a
paginated version and then manually typing each
section and page number into a text file. Has
Viewpoint corrected this?
There was no indexing facility. You had to be a
Mesa programmer to understand Dale Knutsen's
indexer, let alone actually *use* it. Has
Viewpoint corrected this?
I can remember when Barb Detlor was working on
version 2.0 of the Ethernet Spec: it took a man-
month just to do a simple semi-log graph like Fig-
ure 7-2. She had to get down on the bitmap and
guesstimate where each vertical line was supposed
to go. A waveform like Figure 7-3 had to be made
by counting *up* 50 pixels then *across* 30 pixels
then *down* 50 pixels then *across* 30 pixels...
you get the idea. Might as well be using pic. Has
Viewpoint corrected this?
Tables were menu-driven. This meant that in order
to construct a table you were bound to (con-
strained, stuck-having-to-use) the format WHICH
WAS BUILT INTO THE MENU. For instance, the menu
would allow you to split a column into two sub-
columns, but not three. Has Viewpoint corrected
this?
Finally,
has Xerox actually decided to *support*
these products? I've gone down to the local Xerox
Store and found that the salespeople have never
even heard of the 6085. It's worse than the 820.
They still want to sell you floppy disks and Raven
laserprinters. Therefore, how does one get to
*see* Viewpoint? (A familiar complaint from any-
one who has ever worked for Xerox.)
Ironically, Bravo was *faster* than Star. Unfor-
tunately you had to use kludges like pressedit to
intercalate illustrations into your text.
The *real* ironic thing is that nowadays ickey old
troff seems as tolerable as Star (once you climb
atop learning curve). For instance, it is fairly
trivial to make one's self a copy of the macro
package, modify it, and then run your documents
through it. (Ignoring the previewer.)
--------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 17:38:48 PDT
From: chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
Subject: Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
> How about a *real* publishing package? I mean one that:
Well, define publishing. I can see a number of different publishing
niches, many mutually exclusive:
o book publishing. A one-shot, 200 page, write, format, typeset and
send to the publisher item. At least one DTP book published in
the last month did exactly this, using a Mac, laserwriter and
a typesetting house.
o magazines/newsletters. 10-200 pages/month, same format each time.
things like my Otherrealms, which is 30 pages a month.
o flyers/advertising. small (1-4 page) one-shot stuff, things like data
sheets and most of the marketing groups paper.
o technical documentation. Unix man pages, unix documents. they change,
they get updated, they're a pain to work with. In general, the
technical writing end of the world, which is the least flexible
and most complicated.
Now, something that can handle Man pages probably won't handle the flexibility
needed to allow someone to do the newletter for their User's Group. One
implies simplicity, one is designed to be simple to use, one is for the power
user.
> Let's face it, Mac just don't cut it. (Or does the nomen
> ``desktop'' by definition restrict the package to memos, et al.?)
This is a bigoted insinuation. Maybe the Mac doesn't have a package that
does what you need, but don't denigrate the fact that it does some things
MUCH better than the Sun currently does. Much cheaper, too.
For example, Interleaf can't do most of what MacPublisher II does. The
Sun doesn't have anything that in my eyes comes close to Microsoft Word.
From the point of view of an author and newsletter publisher as opposed to
a a tech writer, the Sun sucks rocks in many ways. This is said while
standing firmly in both sides of the battle, as I work with Suns during
the day and Macs at night. I can't write on the Sun. Does that mean
I should just toss it away as worthless? No, I should (and do) use it
for its strengths.
Seriously, though, my MacPublisher II program can do all of what you're
asking except:
> <> can keep running count of figure numbers and tables;
>
> <> CAN GENERATE TABLES OF CONTENTS, TABLES OF
> TABLES/FIGURES!
>
> <> CAN GENERATE (expletive deleted) INDICES!
And has hooks in for parts of these. you can generate a pseudo TOC in MPII.
I don't find it terribly useful the way I use it, but it can be done. There
is also an automatic index generator for the Mac, which is a hack, but it can
also be done.
I can't think of a Unix based package that really does good indices or
TOC's, for that matter. Unless you count the many hacks done to make
troff conform to some notion of rightness, but we can argue for months
about whether someone should be confronted with a beast like troff at all.
One final note: Maker, from Frame Technologies, goes a long way towards
removing my problems with the Sun from a desktop publishing point of view.
I still haven't seen a good word processor, though. vi and emacs need not
apply.
--------------------
Date: 10 Sep 86 18:03:25 PDT (Wednesday)
Subject: Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
In answer to all your questions, you can get indexing, Table of
Contents, and ALOT more speed than before. You still need to paginate
to see the document as it is actually going to look on the printout but
speed has been improved by having a simple and full paginate.
Doodle, etc. are soon if not now semi/full supported products. While
the local sales rep. may not know much, try contacting the Corp. for
more detailed info.
Everything I say in this document should be construed as opinion.
--------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 86 08:53:40 CDT
From: johnson@p.cs.uiuc.edu (Ralph Johnson)
Subject: TOC, index on Unix
>I can't think of a Unix based package that really does good indices or
>TOC's, for that matter.
LaTeX does a very good job of making a table of contents, as well as
tables of figures and tables. There are hooks to make indices, but they
require the user to mark the locations in the document that are to appear
in the index. The TOC is made automatically from the section headings,
though there are options that allow the user to have different titles
in the TOC than in the document. LaTeX runs on Unix, as well as the Mac
and IBM PCs. Of course, it isn't WYSIWYG, but it is the best of all the
batch document processing systems, in my opinion. In comparison, troff
is an antique. LaTeX beats it in every category; ease of use, ease of
learning, flexibility, power, quality of output, cost of machine resources
(at least, on documents with lots of math, which is where my interest lie)
and portability.
One major advantage of batch systems over the WYSIWYG systems that I have
seen is the ability to write macros for mathematical notation. I always
find that I change my notation many times before I get something that
other people like to read. By using macros, I can uniformly change my
notation with little effort. Of course, this only becomes a factor with
moderately large documents with lots of math, but I do prefer LaTeX to
WYSIWYG systems for those kinds of documents. I am not arguing in favor
of batch systems; in general WYSIWYG systems are much better. However,
I am wondering if anybody has figured out a good solution for this problem
in WYSIWYG systems.
--------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 86 09:31:36 pdt
From: jbarry@rambaud (John Barry)
Subject: Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
I'd like to dispel the myth that you have to have virtual supercomputer
power to do serious desktop publishing. In fact, I recently coauthored a
book on the subject using nothing more than a Macintosh, Word, MacDraw,
MacCharlie, a PC clone and a laser printer.
My coauthor and I wrote and edited the book with a Mac and Word. We tranferred
the Mac files to an HP Vectra with MacCharlie (from Dayna Communications).
An associate formatted the book on the Vectra, using TeX, and we had
camera-ready copy produced for us (at cost, plus a mention in the book)
by TextSet of Ann Arbor, MI. TextSet mailed the camera copy to our
publisher's production dept, which dropped in the artwork and shipped the
boards to the printer.
The whole operation went relatively smoothly, and (now for the pitch) the
result is "Desktop Publishing," Barry, Davis, Wiesenberg, Dow
Jones-Irwin, 1986.
--------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 22:44:13 PDT
From: dirk@words (Dirk van Nouhuys)
Subject: More on Production Support of Large, Structured Documents
As Joe Heinrich pointed out production of manuals requires some heavy
functions that are not offered by word processors or the current page makeup
programs, which are oriented toward page composition only. These requirements
have to do with the fact that manuals (and specs, and proposals, and reports,
and many other technical documents) are not organized linearly like a novel
or two-dimensionally like an ad or newspaper, but have a tree structure and
require indices as yet another dimension of access. In this connection I
forward a memo, slightly edited, that I contributed to a discussion of
document production systems specs at Sun:
The virtues of Structured Files for Text
I worked for many years at SRI and Tymshare with a system called AUGMENT
(the place where the mouse was developed),
which stored text in a structured rather than a sequential file, like
grapes in a bunch, if you will, rather than beads on a string. If I set
aside the penalties associated with time sharing and the lack of a bit-
mapped display, that system, basically worked out by 1970, was better
than any current system I know. I cannot tell you then many valuable
powers it gave writers and book makers, but here are a few.
The basic unit of storage of text was a variable-length record. Attached to
this record were a location in an outline structure, the user name of the
last person who modified it, and the time of that modification. Graphic
files could be attached to nodes of this tree.
In front of the file system sat a view processor. By default it showed
the whole text of the record without the date and user information,
outline number, or indenting. Simple user commands could show the outline
numbers (in a range of formats), indent according to the outline, show the
time or user name s Thu Septamp, or restrict view to the fist line of all outline
items of a given level, or levels as you wished. This view control
included the usefulness of looking at headers only in a message file, but
you could set the array of headers to any consecutive set of outline
levels. Thus you could survey a two-hundred page document as chapter
heads, or heads and sub heads, or to the third level and so on.
It came with a mouse-based command system that acted as facilely on outline
items or trees as does the window editor on words, or does a good word
procession on sentences or paragraphs. That is, you could point at an
item in the outline, and and do the equivalent of delete, stuff, put, or,
get to the whole structure regardless of its size in terms of text.
You did not have to keep separate chapters in separate files to be
assembled make files.
To take a couple of other examples, say you wanted to start editing at the
content "foo," which you knew was in chapter 7. You could select chapter 7
and initiate search at that point. You could type the outline number
into a command and thus bring to view any part of a large document as
easily as you can bring to view the head of a file. The written commands
could be stored as text (filename:outline number: string search)
[beginnersguide, 7.2.1, "foo"], which you could select and load, with the
final addressed element at the top of the window, thus doing many of things
the Notecard system Tom mentioned does.
Material to be printed passed through the viewing processor before it went
to a troff-like formatter, thus allowing you to produce tables of contents by clipping the view. The troff-like processor, by the way, lacked macros, but was no harder to use for documents of the sort we produce because
it keyed to the outline structure. E.g. a single piece of formatting code
would set the type face of all third level headings, or their indentation,
or cause page breaks before all first level headings etc. Of course none
of us are interested in settling for anything less that a WYSIWYG system
for the next step, but what is convenient for a user setting
formatting codes is convenient code that is formatting a window in a
WYSIWYG view.
Incidently, side bars became easy. The printer would mark side
bars based on the basis of the date or user stamps I mentioned aboved.
In my garage lurk many old SRI reports on the use and construction of this
system, if anyone wants to read more, and the last time I heard it was
still available form Tymshare; I could probably arrange a demo.
How Deep Does The Graphic Command Interface Go?
ALIS, Interleaf, and Viewtech don't carry graphic control of text as far as
they should. For example if you want to set the margins of a paragraph
in ALIS or Interleaf you have to type numbers. into a form. I don't think
you should ever have to type a number to change the shape of something.
A rectangle should appear on a grid in the window and you should be able
to drag the margins and indentation with the mouse, in the general style
of MacDraw.
A Blue-Pencil System
I would like to get away from paper editing with the ambiguity of
handwriting and the burden of retyping. I would like a writer to be able to
distribute to reviewers a formatted copy by electronic mail (see below).
The reviewer would type comments online with a distinct appearance, say
a special font. If the writer liked the comment, when the copy was returned
by electronic mail (or through access in a sccs-like structure), he or she
could then select it to replace on be included in the text.
Hyphenation: More and more technical documents are turning to wide,
ragged-right pages. There
is no need for hyphenation in this context. No hyphenation is certainly
better than the
weird hyphenation troff some times gives us. Hyphenation is sometimes
confusing in a context like LISP where variable names contain hyphens.
Mathematical Typesetting: This is very important to a few users, but only
to a few. I do not see it as a requirement of a general system.
Spelling Checkers: Since I am a bad speller I have thought a lot about
them. A spelling checker should go through your document, highlighting
misspelled words, and at each word offer you a list of guesses, from which
you can select to replace the highlighted word. There are two sorts of
algorithms for guesses, some based on phonetics, and some on transposing
characters and lookup. Both are amenable to polishing through AI
techniques.
You should be able to define a list of OK words by selecting the supposed
errors and keep it with the document you are working on or add (or subtract
it) at any time from the main dictionary you are applying. You should be
able to add or subtract at any time similar lists maintained for the group you work with. You should be able to turn on and off prefix and suffix
stripping at any time. It is an advantage if the system can learn your
common typos and automatically correct them.
--------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 86 14:08:18 PDT
From: thompson@moonbeam (David Thompson)
The RT is NOT the only game in town for Interleaf - it also runs on SUN
workstations! Several groups here in the company are using it with
varying levels of success; from what I hear, the major complaint is the
(lack of) ease of integrating text and graphics. Take this with a grain
of salt - it's second-hand information.
If you are looking for something to use on a Sun workstation, you might
also consider SunAlis (Sun's version of Alis by Applix). It does a very
good job of integrating test/graphics/spread sheets/business graphics
(generated directly from spread sheet data)/data bases. While not
specifically set up for desktop publishing, the strong "style guide"
features of SunAlis let you make your own templates, which can be very
comprehensive, if a little complex to create. We in Mfg. Training are
using SunAlis for everything from training checklists to training aids,
and have been very pleased with its capabilities to meet our needs. For
us, SunAlis has been a good compromise between overly-simple-minded
"point at the icon" and very complex "syntax error - fubar 427" type
applications.
--------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 13:17:47 pdt
From: hplabs!well!few (Frank Whaley)
To: hplabs!sun!plaid!dtp
The company I am working with (IMSI, address below) is currently developing
"PagePerfect", a desktop-publishing product for I*M-AT style computers. I
am looking for feedback from this mailing list (along with some other
places) that may help with some upcoming design decisions. Please forgive
any "advertising copy" feel of this posting -- I'm merely trying to
describe the features and design of the product.
Currently, PagePerfect's hardware requirements include:
an I*M-AT (or equivalent) with 640K RAM
hard disk
EGA (128K or more RAM) and display
We consider that an appropriate system would also include:
2 megabytes of L*tus-Int*l-Micr*soft Specification memory
scanner
laser printer
A mouse is optional, but most of you know how handy they are.
We are currently not using a page description language (such as P*stScript
or InterPr*ss), although we plan on supporting printers using these
languages in the future. Instead, we take direct control of the printer
(currently via T*ll Tree Systems JL*SER boards), and provide our own fonts
and graphics routines. This allows us to use very inexpensive (<$1500,
soon <$1000) laser printers, as we bypass most of their electronics and
software. We can also print four pages per minute (eight pages with double
buffering) *regardless* of the textual or graphical composition of the
pages. Our printer model also supports color printing, and we expect to
see color laser printers soon. It has been my experience that most people
using drawing/painting programs to create special effects, rather than
using the capabilities of the page description languages.
Using strictly "clone" hardware, I have constructed a system (8MHz, 640K+2M
RAM, 60M disk, EGA, mouse, JL*SER, laser printer) for about $6000 -- nearly
the price I paid for my first L*serWriter alone.
We currently support several scanners, and allow scanned images (with four-
level gray scales) to be included within documents. We are currently
working on importing graphical images from several popular drawing/painting
products (gray scale or color), and will be able to trap screen images.
PagePerfect is not implemented as a page layout tool, but rather as a full-
featured WYSIWYG word processor with extensions to allow for page layout of
both text and graphics. The result is a single tool which performs page
composition and allows immediate manipulation of both textual and graphical
material. PagePerfect includes a complete file management subsystem (copy,
delete, rename, etc.), an image librarian (when you ask to include an
image, we draw a "thumbnail" for each image file, in addition to displaying
file names), spelling corrector, thesaurus, and color bitmap editor.
PagePerfect is the only micro-based desktop-publishing product I have seen
that operates completely with high-resolution *color* graphics.
I am particularly interested in receiving feedback in the following areas:
Is the I*M-AT hardware environment described above viable for a
desktop-publishing product?
Is the word processor orientation more appropriate or useful than the
current layout-only systems?
Are page description languages being used for fancy effects that could
not be done more efficiently or effectively with a drawing/painting
program?
What is the most irritating thing your current system won't do?
Of course, any other comments (either public or private) will be welcomed
and appreciated.
Additional information is available from:
International Microcomputer Software, Incorporated (IMSI)
1299 Fourth Street
San Rafael, CA 94903
415-454-7101
--------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 86 16:07:25 PDT
From: stanley@pubs (Cyndi Chin-Lee)
Subject: TeX
I'm thinking of buying MacTeX for my Macintosh. However, at $800,
the software ought to be darn good. Anyone have thoughts about
how easy it is to learn (I've been able to handle troff and tbl and
eqn, but not pic)? Do you know how much memory and disk space are
needed. I have a MacPlus with a DataFrame 20.
--------------------
From: wdc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 86 18:16:39 EDT
Subject: What you want is under development at MIT.
Dirk van Nouhuys message on production support of large, structured
documents has prompted me to speak and make some people aware of a
project that I have been quietly working on at MIT.
I've seen Interleaf's office publishing system, and I think it is an
amazing product. It is powerful, fast, and featureful. It does a lot
of things really well. I have not seen typesetting composition
systems, so I don't know what additional functionality they offer. I
concluded that Interleaf represented about the most powerful
composition system for a general user that I was likely to see for a
very long time. I have been quietly reading the Desktop Publishing
mailing list here, to see if anything more was around that I had not
seen.
The problem with Interleaf, and everything else I have seen, is that
they are closed systems. You bring your text to them in one form or
another, and then it gets converted into the document format, and
lives in the big document thereafter. Interleaf may add a spelling
checking program, or some other features, but those of us who what to
add our own functionality will have to wait until Interleaf decides to
add the thing we want.
I saw Dirk's wish list and decided I'd better speak up. I am working
on a system called Foundation for MIT Project Athena. My original
idea when I proposed that MIT support work on writing tools was that
NOBODY knew for sure what sort of writing aids would be best, and that
an open system should be developed. This open system might not get
the total performance of an Interleaf, but it would permit a wide
variety of writing tools to be developed, and to interoperate with
each other.
Foundation is to be the foundation for a variety of tools (I call them
applications) which interoperate, and which can share text with each
other. In addition to being an open system, Foundation provides
support of multiple views of data. Any number of applications can
modify text (or other types of data) and then notify the system that a
change was made to a certain sub-block of data, and the system
notifies all other applications that care about that sub-block so they
can update themselves. This idea helps solve a LOT of the problems of
real-time WYSIWYG and other modifiers of your 'document'.
Perhaps you have heard of that new de-facto standard: The X window
system? Those who work with Macs probably have not, but those who
work with Suns or Microvaxen probably have. It provides support for
text (in multiple fonts, of course) and graphics, and windows onto a
graphics display. Foundation is built on top of X. The X window
system provides the keyboard, display, and mouse support. Foundation
supports structured data and other necessary things to make dealing
with writing tools easier.
The first application Foundation is supporting is a simple editor, a
lot like Macwrite. The second will be an annotator, very similar in
concept to Dirk's Blue-Pencil system. There are some writing faculty
at MIT that would like to experiment with receiving papers
electronically, marking them up electronically, and returning them
electronically. The Foundation Annotator is to be the vehicle for the
markup.
Other applications that Foundation has been conceived for:
Multiple versions of subsets of documents that can be manipulated,
substituted, compared, etc.
Tutorials.
Spelling correction (I too like the notions of highlighting,
dictionary, AND heuristics all for the subsystem.)
Outlining. (I am sending the description of The Stanford system to
the people who work for me to inspire them to a good approach to
outlining.)
Doodling in text and/or graphics.
Integration of other programs like spreadsheets and graphics editors,
and equation editors.
Foundation is written in C and runs under 4.2/4.3 unix with the X
window system. It is NOT complete. It is under development. We have
version 2 of the low level text library under dbx right now for
debugging.
If people are interested in more details, I have some documents that I
have prepared and submitted to people at various times.
Unfortunately, the documents have to be rewritten to catch up to all
the changes in the library we made. Our little group is swamped just
writing the code and experimenting with it at this stage.
Ideally, within a couple of years, a bunch of applications will be
written for Foundation that implement WYSIWYG editing, annotation,
notecards, graphics, etc.
I don't know about you guys, but I am really tired of great ideas
getting locked up into proprietary systems that only do one part of
what I want, or of other great systems that got lost because they were
developed on machines that nobody deals with anymore. It's time for
an open system with a lot of people hooking their applications in and
a lot of problems getting solved and staying solved!
Bill Cattey
Applications Development Programmer
MIT Project Athena
1 Amherst St
Cambridge MA 02139
--------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 86 18:00:07 PDT
From: joeh@eclipse (Joe Heinrich)
Subject: Re: Speaking of software for publishing...
In my case (of course, all appropriate disclaimers
apply!) my *personal* (all appropriate disclaimers again)
definition of publishing is:
o book publishing. A one-shot, 200 page, write, format, typeset and
send to the publisher item. At least one DTP book published in
the last month did exactly this, using a Mac, laserwriter and
a typesetting house.
o technical documentation. Unix man pages, unix documents. they change,
they get updated, they're a pain to work with. In general, the
technical writing end of the world, which is the least flexible
and most complicated.
It's unfortunate that the area in which the
Mac/Laserwriter combination is truly superior was
ignored--as a generator of high-quality camera-ready
copy. Or was it the publisher's decision to (re)typeset
the copy?
How does the Mac handle something like a 200-page text
file? Even with a hard disk, doesn't it start to choke?
I've only run one with the teeny weeny floppies.
> [Chuq]: Now, something that can handle Man pages probably
> won't handle the flexibility needed to allow someone to
> do the newletter for their User's Group. One implies
> simplicity, one is designed to be simple to use, one is
> for the power user.
>
>
>> Let's face it, Mac just don't cut it. (Or does the nomen
>> ``desktop'' by definition restrict the package to memos, et al.?)
>
>
>
> This is a bigoted insinuation. Maybe the Mac doesn't
> have a package that does what you need, but don't deni-
> grate the fact that it does some things MUCH better than
> the Sun currently does. Much cheaper, too.
I'm not certain what you mean by ``bigoted.'' I'll tell
you something else though that doesn't make it: a 9-inch
screen. The fact that a Mac does bitmapped illustrations
with more facility than pic does not mean I have to be
satisfied with it. I'm not trying to start a holy war
here but I'm a little tired of quote publishing systems
unquote that are merely a cut above a Selectric and scis-
sors. (Glen Rotan makes a good point though--what I'm
looking for is a ``manual generator'' and not a memo tem-
plate.)
> [Chuq]: For example, Interleaf can't do most of what Mac-
> Publisher II does. The Sun doesn't have anything that in
> my eyes comes close to Microsoft Word. From the point of
> view of an author and newsletter publisher as opposed to
> a a tech writer, the Sun sucks rocks in many ways. This
> is said while standing firmly in both sides of the bat-
> tle, as I work with Suns during the day and Macs at
> night. I can't write on the Sun. Does that mean I should
> just toss it away as worthless? No, I should (and do)
> use it for its strengths.
I agree with your description of Interleaf. However, can
you run Microsoft Word in a bitmapped window environment?
On something other than a Mac--i.e., a decent-sized
screen? With a preview facility? Meaning: fonts viewed
in their correct point size, correct leading, etc.? Page
breaks correctly applied? And so on? (See my {no longer
valid?} litany of whinings about Star.)
> [Chuq]: Seriously, though, my MacPublisher II program can
> do all of what you're asking except:
>
>> <> can keep running count of figure numbers and tables;
>>
>> <> CAN GENERATE TABLES OF CONTENTS, TABLES OF
>> TABLES/FIGURES!
>>
>> <> CAN GENERATE (expletive deleted) INDICES!
>
>
> And has hooks in for parts of these. you can generate a
> pseudo TOC in MPII. I don't find it terribly useful the
> way I use it, but it can be done. There is also an
> automatic index generator for the Mac, which is a hack,
> but it can also be done.
>
> I can't think of a Unix based package that really does
> good indices or TOC's, for that matter.
Hmmm. You bring up an interesting point: what is a
``really good index''? The -mex macro package Henry
McGilton and Bill Tuthill have written (that we use to
format our tech pubs stuff) handles indices. And table of
contents are generated *automatically* when invoked
through a makefile.
> [Chuq]: Unless you count the many hacks done to make
> troff conform to some notion of rightness, but we can
> argue for months about whether someone should be con-
> fronted with a beast like troff at all.
>
> One final note: Maker, from Frame Technologies, goes a
> long way towards removing my problems with the Sun from a
> desktop publishing point of view. I still haven't seen a
> good word processor, though. vi and emacs need not
> apply.
My problem is, after having seen things like Bravo and
Star and Island Graphics and Scribe and troff (and even
Interleaf) it's difficult for me to take the Mac seri-
ously. (You're probably right--I *am* bigoted. But why
should I have to be satisfied with *less* than I now
have?) The point is, I don't want to have to learn
aNOTHer system for just a eentsy beentsy bit of improve-
ment. I want a qualitative improvement from the baseline
I already enjoy--is this asking too much?
Maybe I should define what I mean by ``desktop publish-
ing'': I have a Sun on top of my desk and I use it to
publish.
------------------------------------------------------------
Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com
Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com
Digests will go away when the archives are caught up.
Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM [I don't read flames]
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity