Re: Tools query

[Dick Gaskill <dickg -at- AG3D -dot- COM>]

Becca, All,

Regarding Ventura, Interleaf and Frame ...

I was one of the first users (and champions) of Ventura Publisher (VP),
way back in '87 or so when it ran only under the GEM interface, and was
owned by the original developers, John Meyer and his 3 buddies.  Around
'90 I changed jobs and used Interleaf for a couple of years, and then
moved to a company that was using a tool that at the time (like
Interleaf) ran only on Unix.  Something called FrameMaker.

At the time, VP was the only "book-type" DTP tool available for PCs, and
Interleaf, which originally ran only on Unix, was trying to port it to
PC's to compete with VP   Around '91, I think, John & Co $old VP to
Xerox who did some developement but didn't market it well, and a few
years later, sold it to Corel.  About that time, Frame Technology ported
FM to both PCs and Macs, and here we are.

Although I can't give you a feature by feature comparison off the top of
my head, I can say that each tool has definite advantages and
disadvantages, with Frame being the overall winner for ease-of-use and
functionality.

*       Ventura had a neat feature that allowed you move the equivalent
of a FM book file and all it's sub files, including graphics, to another
directory and have the internal pointers (path names) change
automatically.  The menu system was similar to Frame's and fairly easy
to use, but not as well developed, as least during the time I was using
it.  But, although it was WYSIWYG, faster than the batch-process,
troff-like tool that we were using before VP, and would print one page
at a time, VP still took forever-and-a-day to print anything.
*       Interleaf allowed users to rearrange books and chapters by
dragging icons around on the screen.  Chapter and page numbers would
update automatically as I recall. Faster and easier than opening a book
dialog box in FM and moving one file at a time, then manually changing
numbers in each chapter as well.  As I recall, it had several book-level
functions including spell-checking, that we've been asking Frame and
Adobe for, for at least the last 5 years that I know of.   And it had an
optionally displayable column at the left of the page that listed the
tagname next to each paragraph. But IL's child-box menu system was the
pits, and I do mean PITS, to put it nicely.  Very slow and difficult to
use compared to FM's.
*       Frame includes several of the features of both VP and IL, adds
SGML, macros (on Unix), programming capability through the FDK, a
reasonable menu system, good graphics and table capabilities, etc.
Although it has the ability to import both VP and IL files, plan on
doing manual cleanup afterward.  The current FM version requires a lot
of computing power, no matter what platform you run on, but this is
typical for most DTP programs today.  Although I agree with the
statements given by David Warren, I don't think the size of the user
base is a reason to buy anything.
Overall, I found that FM is the easiest to learn, has the best
ease-of-use,  the most functionality, and the best support of the three,
but it's iimportant to note that I did not use tham all at the same
time.  I've not used Quark so I can't include it in this comparison.
Word and Pagemaker are not the same type of tools (different and less
functionality, with some overlap) and (IMHO) should not be compared to
VP, IL, and FM.
HTH
Dick Gaskill


<snip>
     * Works as seamlessly as can be across different platforms
     * Actively updated by a strong owner (Adobe)
     * Boasts the largest experienced user base of any DTP program
     * Features reasonable support and update policies.
    David T. Warren
     Pubs. Mgr., Nextel