Publisher vs FrameMaker

[Del Armstrong]

chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com (Chuck Musciano) writes:

[[ I have removed most of the included text.  Anyone wanting to read it
can go back and look at v7n54 again.  --wnl ]]

>I would love to compare and contrast issues with users who have tried
>both tools and like Publisher better.

I'm one! I did the initial evaluation of document processing systems for
our department back in the spring of '87. After looking at a production
version of Frame and Interleaf and a pre-Beta version of The Publisher, we
selected The Publisher.

Some of the reasons for our decision (and current observations):

	- We ruled out Interleaf due to it's interface. Interleaf takes over
	your entire screen, prohibiting the use of SunTool based applications
	while running Interleaf. 

	- Frame Maker was ok, but the things we really want to do it was
	weak in, or didn't support at all. (Notice the use of the past
	tense, it has been a while since I looked at Frame Maker ...
	Caveat Reader!)

	- The Publisher was (still is) the only one based on TeX. For us
	this turns out to have been one of the deciding factors. TeX is
	probably the most developed document formatting system available,
	simply because so many people use it. I believe that this gives
	ArborText a real advantage over other developers. Also by writting
	TeX macros, we can add local hacks to The Publisher in a way that
	we couldn't to other systems.

	- Many of our faculty and students have already been using TeX for
	years, and have numerous documents in TeX. With The Publisher they
	can continue to use those documents, and their collaborations
	don't have to go through the "suddenly we're using incompatible
	software" crisis.  Note: we also had some old troff hackers, for
	them TeX compatibilty didn't help much. This turns out to have
	been more important then I expected, many of the new faculty I've
	dealt with had previously written TeX files they wanted to use. If
	we had gone with Frame Maker, I'd be supporting troff, TeX (no
	easy task!), as well as Frame Maker.

	- For similar reasons, being able to "write" TeX files is very
	usefull.

	- Since we wanted to do scientific papers, equations and being
	able to access a references database were crucial to us. At the
	time Frame Maker failed miserably in these respects. Chuck says
	that equations will be available in version 2.0. If it's a
	structured equation editor, if it knows about equation numbers,
	and how to do inline equations, then it might be worthwhile to
	compare with The Publisher's equation editor.  Keep in mind
	though, ArborText has been working on their's for a long time, it
	really is pretty good. As an academic department, we must have the
	bibliography (references) database ability. The Publisher gives us
	this with built in support for BibTeX. With The Publisher, we can
	access all the BibTeX databases people have, and the BibTeX tools
	people use.

	- I just didn't (don't) buy the "but it's not WYSIWYG" argument.
	The editor window in The Publisher is certainly close enough for
	me to know what the document will look like. Big fonts are big,
	bold fonts are bold, equations and pictures appear in the
	document. Granted, I can't tweak how thing line up along pixel
	boundries until I preview. But when I'm composing prose I find
	that I don't care about those things, spelling and "prettying up"
	the document always require another pass anyway (for me at least).
	This is true even on "real" WYSIWYG editors, such at those I use
	on the Mac.  [[ It's not clear that you should care about things
	like pixel boundary tweaking.  Ask Leslie Lamport about that.
	--wnl ]]

	- Although The Publisher is a large complicated program, I don't
	belive that it's user interface is too complicated. Most of my
	users are using it without benefit of the manual (they're students
	working in public labs). Certainly if you want to use the more
	advanced facilities, you'll want the manual, but that's true with
	any powerful utility. On the other hand I do agree, it'd be nice
	if somehow the different aspects of The Publisher all had exactly
	the same look and feel. Frankly though, I can't get myself to lose
	much sleep over it. My users seem to be able to handle Publisher's
	current interface without much problem.

Finally I really do agree with your comment about ArborText's intended
market. The Publisher is a tool that seems to be nicely crafted for our
specific environment.  It's not suitable for all things, but it's probably
still the best tool around for those with the types of priorities we have.
If you have different priorities, then other features will matter more to
you. That's the way it should be, heaven help us if someone ever writes
the PL/1 of document processing systems, one that's all things to all
people. 

[[ And I am glad this discussion is continuing, because it should help
people decide what their priorities and requirements are and what will be
best suited to their needs.  --wnl ]]

	Del Armstrong

	Internet    : dela at ee.rochester.edu
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