Frame vs. Interleaf vs. ?

[Pat Alvarado]

mark at hermesa.uucp (Mark McWiggins) writes:

>My company is evaluating high-end publishing packages.  So far we
>have a demo of Frame (which looks great) and the Interleaf rep salivating
>over us; haven't seen his package yet.

>Have you been through this?  Which did you pick and why?  Are there other
>contenders that we should consider?

I also have evaluated FrameMaker and Interleaf and found that Interleaf
makes it very difficult to maintain. I am using a Sun 386i Workstation
running SunOS 4.0.3 and SunView. My problems with Interleaf began with
the swap space cost, 26MB per WS recommended by Interleaf. 

Printing became a factor also. First, Interleaf generates print requests 
as userid daemon and generates its own cover page which looks different 
than cover pages we use with lpr. This caused confusion when someone at 
the printer would be sorting the output and not recognizing the cover 
page would mix it up with a previous output.

FrameMaker prints jobs as the real userid of the user. In addition,
an adjustable shell script is available to custom control print jobs.
e.g. If a job will generate a large output, send it to an appropriate
printer for a large output.

Interleaf generates enormous PostScript for print jobs, causing print
requests to take much longer than necessary, and sometime not at all
because Interleaf didn't know how to handle jobs larger than 1MB with
lpr, so lpr would truncate the file. In one case, a single page in
Interleaf generated 900k of PostScript. Interleaf would also take up
so much memory during printing that if a moderate number of other
windows were open (3-4), Interleaf might run out of memory.

FrameMaker generated approximately 1/4 the PostScript code for a similar
document in Interleaf. If a PostScript file did exceed 1MB, the file
would be created locally and a symbolic link established using the
-s option of lpr. I could have as many as 15 other windows open while
using FrameMaker.

In order to resolve a lot of customization, a System Admin with root
password had to get involved to make simple changes. All changes were
Workstation dependent, not user dependent. So provided I always worked
at the same WS, which is usually the case, my WS dependent license and
changes remained intact.

FrameMaker allows the user to use the default system settings, or
create their own in their home directory regardless of the WS. These
include custom templates, lpr scripts, filter programs, window layout,
keyboard shortcuts, etc... and without intervention from a Sys Admin
with root privilege.

Interleaf places all documents within a "desktop" ignoring the main
desktop on the Workstation. This limits workspace, unless the Interleaf
desktop is allowed to expand the entire screen.

FrameMaker places all documents within the main desktop, unconstrained.
You may move the document anywhere you wish. FrameMaker occasionally
has trouble painting the window when sharing with other windows
(at least with SunView), and can be corrected by the redisplay command.
Hopefully this is fixed with FrameMaker 3.0.

Lastly, ease of use. Interleaf has "Walking Menus" in which one must
sift through several levels of menus to achieve even simple tasks,
such as drawing a line, or changing an attribute in a paragraph. Some
commands may be executed via keyboard, but all by mouse.

FrameMaker has a single menu bar at the top of each document. Each menu
generates a task or a "Dialog Box" in which you simply check off what
you need, and apply. Important dialog boxes such as Paragraph attributes,
character attributes, Graphics toolbox, etc ... may remain open. All 
commands may be executed by either keyboard or mouse, and FrameMaker
will indicate the keyboard equivelant next to the menu selection.

While Interleaf may have an abundance of features for creating professional
publications, I found that FrameMaker's features fell within the boundaries
of my needs and made it faster and more productive to create documentation.

Disclaimer:

My views and opinions are my own and do not represent in any way,
shape or form my employer's. I have no affiliation with either Interleaf
or Frame Technology other than as a customer.
-- 
  |||   Pat Alvarado                | 
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