More Publisher vs. Frame

[R. James Nusbaum]

This discussion may have outlived itself in sun-spots, but I thought I'd
try to put in my two cents worth.

Frame is better for quick, free form, one-off documents such as
newsletters, advertisements, graphic art, magazines, etc.  Publisher is
better for journal articles, books, collaborative documents and scientific
papers.  These are two separate niches in the document production world
and no one tool could do both well without being overly complex and
clumsy.

The very power of Publisher lies in its structured environment.  This
allows you to set up rigid structures for things like thesis, IEEE
transactions format, users manuals, etc.  This power is the direct result
of the TeX/LaTeX heritage. It allows large (or small) groups of people to
collaborate on a document and be sure that the final product is
consistent.

I don't claim that Publisher meets all needs, in fact it serves a very
different audience than Frame.

Other advantages of Publisher:

1. Can be used form an ascii terminal (still very important in some
environments)

2. Better graphics than Frame (I least the Frame I tried).  This is a
direct result of the fact that Publishers graphics tools are provided by a
third party who can concentrate only on graphics.

Maybe this should move to another forum now, but Publisher is a good
product and the people at ArborText are very supportive.

[[ Everyone should also remember that the product they tried last year (or
the year before that) might not be the same as this year's.  With all the
competition in the document preparation world, the companies are
continually improving their products:  incorporating new features,
cleaning up user interfaces, fixing old bugs, etc.  --wnl ]]

Jim Nusbaum				ucrmath!proton!nusbaum at ucsd.edu
Radiation Research Laboratory		(714) 799-2177
Loma Linda University Medical Center
Loma Linda, California