[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: Oh, no...
From:       "Thomas Diehl" <thd () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-05-25 7:41:57
[Download RAW message or body]

On Thu, 24 May 2001 20:20:40 +0200, Thomas Zander wrote:

>> In my view, there is nothing in KWord which would make it really
>> "FrameMaker-like". This myth has been going on too long anyway. The
>> "frame concept" has been used everywhere in DTP since the early days of
>> Ventura Publisher, it's also used in QuarkXpress and now (I'm told)
>> even in PageMaker. So this is nothing specific for FrameMaker which I
>> think was even one of the last ones to appear of these programs. Nor
>> can I find much resemblance to FrameMaker in the interface of KWord --
>> thankfully! -- or in the way it works.
>
>Many of the concepts used in KWord or the programes you mention are origionally
>>from Framemaker, it has been around far longer then all of the programs you 
>cite. (First version was Solaris only, it has since been released for 
>Mac/Win/linux)
>
>We are simply giving respect to the first program that did this, not the most 
>familiar ones. :)

This is simply wrong. First was PageMaker for Mac in 1985, second was
Ventura Publisher for PC (GEM) in April 1986, then came XPress and
FrameMaker in 1987. The first of these which had the frame concept was
Ventura Publisher which also was kind of the de facto standard for long
structured documents before the development stagnated and FrameMaker
took over the tech doc market. Which is also why many people are surely
more familiar with FrameMaker than with recent versions of Ventura.

>You are simply incorrect if you fail to see the concepts of KWord come 
>>from framemaker.

OK. -- Anyway, I would urge anybody who is designing a new DTP or WP
program (and esp. one that is trying to do DTP _and_ WP) to take a good
look at Ventura 8. As usual with Corel stuff not everything works as
advertised but the feature set and esp. the GUI and overall design is
still miles ahead of the competition, IMO. (No problem to see
yourself, BTW. There are free Ventura demos around if you have a
Windows PC around and if you don't you can even run it online at
www.runaware.com)

>Frames/flows (framesets in kword), styles, and the
>simple fact that framemaker is a WP, not a DTP program, as is KWord. Those 
>things set KWord apart from the DTP corner.

Well, as you know, I'm a professional DTPer myself and although
FrameMaker is often referred to as a "wordprocessor on steroids" by
many DTPers many of them don't have any doubt that it is a professional
publishing tool and, thus, a DTP program although not in the page-layout
area as PageMaker, InDesign, or XPress. But as we have seen before,
this is mostly a terminological question about how to define "DTP".

>The frames in DTP software are frames which can contain text or pictures.
>But there is no similar concept like framesets which KWord uses. Only 
>framemaker has that.
>Yes you can connect text-frames in Quark express and friends, but that 
>works only for short texts, not for books.

The frame concept in Ventura is different. But you sure enough can
connect them and I know of projects of several thousand pages which
were done with it. Most Ventura users today are still in book publishing
but you can do graphic intensive stuff just as well. For (German) examples
see http://www.dtp-service.com/ventura/beispiele

>I guess this is the way it is with programming languages, if you don't know
>a tool/principle exists (recursiveness comes to mind), you don't know you 
>missed it. But when you find out about this tool, you simply never want 
>to go back.

Well, I did quite some work in both programs. (Only a few months back I
even had to write a book on KDE in FrameMaker.) On the whole, I'd say 
that I miss very few FrameMaker features in Ventura (maybe line
synchronization) but I miss lots and lots of the Ventura capabilities
in FrameMaker.

>I will not say anything about Ventura except that I am the type that 
>actually gets up and tries to fix the problem, instead of waiting
>for others to _perhaps_ port this to a market that is yet non-provitable
>for all parties out there.

Totally fine with me. I surely wouldn't want to wait for Corel or
somebody else to bail us out. But, as you also say: the DTP ambitions
of KWord are limited. So there's still no solution in sight for a lot
of things that programs like Ventura (XPress, Indesign and others) can
do.

Regards,

Thomas



--- 
KDE translation: http://i18n.kde.org/
Deutsche KDE-Uebersetzung: http://i18n.kde.org/teams/de/

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]