jdr@sloth.mlb.semi.harris.com (Jim Ray) (03/26/91)
Don't flame me yet -- I sent out the following posting to the next and mac news groups, but forgot to send one to the pc newsgroup. So here goes. We have a group that is interrested in upgrading their current publishing capabilities ( currently using Mac's ). They are interrested in using frame on a couple of Next's and the existing Mac's to put out black and white glossies. Management has decided ( with their PC wizzard ) that MAC's and Next ( and for that matter any computer other than a PC ) are not acceptable. Instead they have come up with an alternative proposal ( about 200k more expensive ) using PC's exclusively. Now to my questions: 1) What risk is there in going with the Next? I don't expect them to go out of business any time soon -- but is that an unrealistic expectation? 2) Are there "superior" PC solutions in the publishing arena that would compare? The group is pretty set on using Frame though. 3) The "consultant" expressed his concern over that although it was true that MAC's and Next's ( he seem's not not know that the Next is a unix os ) were easier to use from an user-interface point of view, once the "user" became more proficient a more "PC" oriented tool ( somehow he equated textual input to pc's ) would be more efficient for the "user". I don't buy this, even though I haven't been that fond of MAC's myself ( I prefer Unix based machines ). 4) The "consultant" expressed reservations that any non-pc solution could not possibly contain a "documentation" management tool. He wasn't really clear as to what he meant by "documentation management tool". Anyone have any ideas??? 5) I use Frame on Sun's and Dec's and other workstations, and find it quite acceptable. If there are some reasons as to not use a Next machine ( can't come up with any currently ), does anyone out there see anything wrong with using some Unix system like the above instead of PC's? The limitations of PC's don't appeal to me very much. 6) What features on MAC's and Next's that would be superior to PC's given a publishing orientation. Thanks, Jim Ray -- Jim Ray Harris Semiconductor Internet: jdr@semi.harris.com PO Box 883 MS 62B-022 Phone: (407) 729-5059 Melbourne, FL 32901
dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) (03/27/91)
In article <1991Mar26.000100.18807@mlb.semi.harris.com>, jdr@sloth.mlb.semi.harris.com (Jim Ray) writes: > 3) The "consultant" expressed his concern over that although it was > true that MAC's and Next's ( he seem's not not know that the Next is a > unix os ) were easier to use from an user-interface point of view, > once the "user" became more proficient a more "PC" oriented tool ( > somehow he equated textual input to pc's ) would be more efficient for > the "user". I don't buy this, even though I haven't been that fond of > MAC's myself ( I prefer Unix based machines ). I presume he was thinking partly of the advantages of structured markup vs. procedural markup: that is, telling the computer, that some text is a section header vs. telling the computer to typeset it in 20pt boldface, flush left. Advantages? Well, for one thing, one does not need to know what the final format of the document is to be when typing their input; changing the formatting style (e.g., for an internal document which is later published in a conference proceedings) is fairly simple--one only changes a few header items. In short, it's largely the difference between object oriented programming versus non-OOP. (It always puzzles me that the computer word has embraced object-oriented approaches to nearly everything _but_ text processing). > 4) The "consultant" expressed reservations that any non-pc solution > could not possibly contain a "documentation" management tool. He > wasn't really clear as to what he meant by "documentation management > tool". Anyone have any ideas??? Let's see, perhaps a revision control system (there's some sort of RCS-thingie on Unix, I believe)? Perhaps the ability to store the documents in a relational database for retrieval (well, actually, except for systems like troff, TeX, sgml, etc. which use plain text input files, most text formatting software is ill-suited for database publishing). -dh Don Hosek dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu Quixote Digital Typography 714-625-0147