[Tfug] Desktop Publishing Software

[Claude Rubinson]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2007 at 03:58:32PM -0700, Bexley Hall wrote:
> comes up with.  Ventura *was* a better product until
> Corel dicked with it and made all of the nice ASCII
> files "proprietary" (before that, you could write
> scripts to mangle the hell out of your publication
> at will)

I'm not familiar with Ventura.  Was it f/oss or was it simply that its
file format was plain text?  If it was that much better than
FrameMaker, has any f/oss project come along and picked it up?

> Unlike most folks, I pick a tool/version and stick
> with it "for a long time" -- "updates be damned"!

That's my approach as well.  (See, e.g., Claude's passion for Emacs,
fvwm, and LaTeX.)  That's why I want to do a bit of research before
making a decision.  And why I want to make sure that it's going to be
around.  I've yet to pick a dedicated vector graphics program (which,
in the past, I've used for designing my theoretical/methodological
models for my research papers) but one that remains on the top of my
list is Xfig.  It's clunky, ugly, and has the most insanely modal
interface I've ever come across.  But it's powerful and has been
around forever.

> I've never *had* to ask a question about FrameMaker.
> It's just *that* intuitive (at least "to an engineer"
> :>  )

For programs that I'm going to learn in a fair amount of depth, how
intuitive the product is isn't actually that important to me.  What is
important is sufficient documentation so that I can really make use of
it.  See, e.g., my above comment re:Xfig.

There's a great cartoon on the web somewhere that graphs the learning
curves of different editors against their productivity.  Notepad's
levels off after about 2 minutes.  vi's has a steep slope that may or
may not level off at all (I can't recall at the moment), and Emacs'
learning curve spirals in upon itself.  For the programs that I'm
going to use frequently, I definitely prefer the latter two models.
I'm willing to make the investment for future payoff.

C.