Re: Recomendations for dtp software for windoze

[D Gardner <DGARDNER -at- UWOHALI -dot- COM>]

> Frame is very different from Interleaf (I'm making the transfer the other
> way, I've left a Frame shop and I've just started with Interleaf), but it
> looks like they have the same type of muscle power. Frame allows book
 building,
> cross references, has an equivalent to Interleaf's "Masters," and probably
> has other similarities (but I don't know Interleaf well enough to tell you
> what they are).

I've used Interleaf a fair amount over the last 4 years and really
respect it's power.  The catalogs are very useful for maintaining
consistency in components across documents in a book or a series of
books.

> On the other hand, the Windows version of FrameMaker is similar in some ways
> to MS Word for Windows (I assume that's the "Word 6.0" you meant), so you'll
> find the learning curve is much smaller than the Interleaf/Unix to
> Word/Windows transition.

> And Frame will convert existing Word 6.0 files to Frame files, so that's a
> help for your situation.

Yes, it's w4w 6.0 that we have currently.  If we do go ahead and
switch,  about the only thing I would convert is my format doc for
the proposals.  I am proposing to use the dtp software for the large
jobs and continue to use w4w for the small, everyday stuff.  As this
seems to be proposal season, it should end up being used quite a bit.

Interleaf is NOT a user friendly, intuitive program.  I've learned
95% of the programs I know by doing, not taking classes but Interleaf
I HAD to just to get started with it.  I learned it when 4.0 was the
current version and windoze hadn't become a standard piece of s/w on
new machines.  We were using 2 dos programs at Hamilton Standard - WP
5.0 and Displaywrite 4.  Talk about a learning curve coming from
those types of programs, which I wasn't using everyday in my job
anyways!

> One downside: FrameMaker is a memory hog. Despite what the advertising says,
> the minimum RAM requirement for acceptable peformance is 16MB. More would
> be even better.

My pc here does have 16 mg RAM and is an older machine.  There's talk
of buying some new pc's so that everyone has one on their desk who
uses them frequently (small company) and our computer guru is talking
pentium 90's so with a little luck, maybe I'll end up with one of the
new ones as I'm head of (and am) Tech Pubs here.  I think spending an
average of 6 out 8 hours per day doing instensive work ought to
justify getting one of the new ones. <G>

Thanks for your input.