[Tfug] Desktop Publishing Software

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

--- Claude Rubinson <rubinson at u.arizona.edu> wrote:

> 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

It was (is) a commercial product, as is FrameMaker.
(IMO, the OSS world doesn't have any *real* DTP
tools to offer -- and I'm not a big enough religious
zealot to AVOID using good tools that are NOT "free"
:>  )

The early (pre-Corel) versions used plain ASCII files
for damn near *everything*.  Resembled HTML in many
ways.  So, you could go into a "text editor" (I used
Brief, at the time, under DOS) and write little
scripts to go through the text and manipulate cross
references, insert index entries, etc.  Or, even
do things like insert graphics (i.e. REFERENCES to
graphic files) wherever you want -- just by typing in
the correct ASCII character sequence for the tag,
etc.)

> better than
> FrameMaker, has any f/oss project come along and
> picked it up?

AFAIK, it is still being sold.  Probably bundled with
some other "office" suite, etc.
 
> > 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

Note that FrameMaker also has a semiportable file
format (MIF) that you can massage with text processing
tools.  I have not had the need to, so far.  And,
if you *really* want to, there is a "developers
toolkit" (free) that you can use to write your
own extensions to FM.  (I had toyed with the idea
of implementing tangle/web but decided there were
more interesting things to do with my time  :>  )

> 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 don't draw much.  And, the things that I *do*
draw tend to be very geometric or mechanical.  So,
I use AutoCAD for them because I can impose real
"dimensions" and other physical constraints on the
parts of the drawing.  E.g., "make a line 3 units
long, then another that is 5 units long at an angle
of 37 degrees to the first, then 'close' the figure
doing whatever is necessary to get from here to there"

<shrug>  I just don't deal with abstract shapes very
well.  <:-(

Lately, I have resorted to taking lots of photographs
and pasting them into documents instead of trying to
sketch something.  PhotoShop is a win there cuz I
can cut all the background stuff out of the photo
and make *the* item I am interested in be the sole
part of the picture.  E.g., take pictures of 5
different peripherals and paste them around the
photo of a particular device and now I have a
"photo" of a hypothetical design...
 
> > 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

The biggest issue for me with FrameMaker is dealing
with "special characters".  E.g., "How the hell do
I insert a non-breaking space?  What's the keystroke
sequence for a 'em-dash'? etc."  There are manuals
(that are FrameMaker documents, themselves, that
spell all this stuff out.  I'm just annoyed that
I don't *remember* all of them -- e.g. I use a lot
of em-dashes  :<  )

> 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

I guess the first 1:59 of that is the time it takes
for the program to load?  :>

> 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.

Exactly.  I don't need to "upgrade" to some new set
of *bugs*.  Just give me something that is "well
behaved" -- bugs and all!  :>

E.g., Ventura was great because you could exploit
things that the designers hadn't considered (e.g.,
negative sizes for fonts) to coax it into doing
things that it "couldn't" (officially) do.

Good luck!

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com