Publisher vs FrameMaker

[Chuck Musciano]

I received some attention from ArborText regarding my recent postings
about the relative merit of Publisher vs Frame Maker.  I was able to spend
some time with Melanie Kessler of ArborText at the SUG, and looked at
version 2.0 of Publisher.  Tony Camozzi of Arbor Text had chastised me for
basing my comments on version 1.0.  So in the interest of fairness, here
is an updated look at Publisher, based upon my original four complaints:

     1) I couldn't do anything without reading the manual first.

	I didn't directly use Publisher, so I can't comment.  The
	interface is fundamentally the same, although more aestecthically
	pleasing, with more use of dialog boxes rather than pull-right
	menus.  A personal opinion: the appearance of these dialog boxes
	is rather unattractive, and makes finding important elements in
	the dialog box difficult.  A review by a talented graphics artist
	would do wonders for the interface.

     2) It isn't WYSIWYG.

	This is still true.  The edit-print-examine cycle is not tolerable
	for me.  I want to see what I do, as I do it.  Another interesting
	thing: table of contents generation is a two pass operation, and
	Publisher does the first pass, and then reminds you to do the
	second.  That could be better automated.

     3)	The preview/edit interfaces are different.

	This is still true, although you can rebind the keys to make them
	match.  For novice users, who don't know how to bind keys, this is
	still unacceptable.

     4) The drawing tools are separate tools.

	Still true.  Although these tools are quite powerful, and do nice
	things, they are not integrated into your document, and you have
	to learn multiple tools to use Publisher effectively.

Publisher does an excellent job with equations, and has an acceptable
table editor.  Version 2.0 is an improvement over 1.0, but I still find
fault with basic design decisions within Publisher.  Edit/preview is just
not state of the art in my book.  It seems that ArborText is targetting
scientific publishing, and feels that Frame cannot penetrate this niche
right now.  I wonder how ArborText will feel when Maker 2.0 with equations
comes out.

Publisher does not allow free form documents, like newsletters.  It can
handle up to four columns of text per page (why such an arbitrary
restriction?) and cannot handle mutiple text flows in a single document.
I really believe that Frame, while not up to Publisher in equation
handling, is by far the more versatile and powerful tool.  I also find it
much easier to use.

Again, I want to emphasize that these are my !opinions!.  I think there is
a tremendous interest in doc-gen right now, and that lots of people are
puzzling over which tool to purchase.  I would love to compare and
contrast issues with users who have tried both tools and like Publisher
better.

Chuck Musciano
Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corporation
(407) 727-6131
ARPA: chuck at trantor.harris-atd.com