Ben Cramer writes: >Many here have argued that a wordprocessor is not, and shouldn't >necessarily be expected to be, and desktop publishing app. I now >put forth a different view: electronic publication is the way of the >future, and electronic publication creates different needs than paper >>publication. In some respects, that is true. For example, reading on-screen is not the same as reading on paper, and one needs to take that into account in document design and typography. On the other hand, whether the final output is to be printed as a book or posted as a PDF, it is simply a fact that most of the people who write most kinds of documents are really quite bad at designing an attractive, easy-to-read layout or making good use of typography. I'm not a graphic designer or typographer myself but, given so many years of experience as an editor and as a reader, I can't help doing a better job of it than most -- at least my documents are consistent and readable and don't try to incorporate ten fonts in a page! As I've said before, I can do an acceptable low-end job with Nisus --that is, good enough to produce a nice-looking report or flier-- but even I can produce a much better layout with an ancient copy of PageMaker than I can with a recent version of any wordprocessor. (Heck, even Claris Works 3.0 is better for some things!) BUT --and it is a big "but" based on experiencee-- if what you are trying to produce is camera-ready masters for printing or a real knockout of a PDF document, you simply have to take the next step and handle the document with specialized software. It's a difference on the same order of magnitude as comparing my doodling in Claris Paint with the work of a real illustrator using Illustrator. >We may end up with lots of little applications, each of which does >one part of the process extremely well but nothing more (for instance, >combine SimpleText, Excalibur, an extremely stripped down spreadsheet, >and something akin to Acrobat but that actually allows you to squish the >parts of the document around to get a good layout.) The other option is >to have only a few apps, each of which doing a large chunk of the work. >I don't find the first option to my liking, but I wonder what others here >think. Let's face it: we humans are a) lazy, and b) cheap. Practically all of us really want ONE program which costs $100 and does EVERYTHING well ... but that's really a pipe-dream. It's extremely difficult to get all the bits and pieces of a modern program to work properly and not clash with one another. In fact, the big brand-name software packages are not single programs in the old sense of the word: they are combinations of groups of programs, drivers, macros, etc. That is the major reason why even the most dedicated programmers often end up issuing a series of updates to resolve particular problems which occur rarely or only with a particular configuration. The program which tries to do everything rapidly becomes unwieldy and unstable, as well as too confusing for the average person to use. Meanwhile, those of us accustomed to using smaller special-purpose programs ALSO work in an environment too confusing for the average person and prone to conflicts between one little thingie and another. But we are not usually average people -- we are designers or artists or computational linguists or whatever, and we can't expect mass-market software for the general user to do all of the odder things we do. >As far as the second option goes, NW has billed itself (and built >itself) as a powerful application for doing both text editing and text >formatting. With the advent of electronic publication, it is necessary >for many of us to be able to do full page layout with graphics and table >integration. That may depend on the type of electronic publication envisaged. In-house documents for business and self-published e-books may require the author to do the graphics and layout, even if he or she doesn't do it particularly well. Other forms of electronic publication don't simply take an author's files as the finished product --they are edited for format as well as for content, and chances are there will be quite a lot of work in that whether the results are going to be published in a visual form (PDF, on-line help file, etc.) or distributed as Setext or SGML text files with graphics provided as attachments. >I don't particularly want to adopt a new app like PageMaker >to do this, but maybe I should. If I do, though, then I don't see >why I need anything more than BBedit and Excalibur to write the text >for my documents. My point precisely. The last thing one wants an expensive DTP expert to be doing is wasting hours removing the author's formatting and his software's proprietary codes. For that matter, as a writer I do a better job if I concentrate on the content first and get that nailed down before I start messing with the visual aspect. This is true whether I then do the formatting in the same software or whether I import the text into a DTP program. The question is really "what is my end-product supposed to be?" If the answer is "a well-designed, carefully illustrated book or e-book" and you are not possessed of those skills, the software (regardless of what kind it is) can't do the job for you and it would be a good idea to let the appropriate expert do that work --he or she will certainly have the right tools and know how to use them well. If the answer is "a technical report to be run off on the laser printer, spiral-bound, and distributed to those concerned with its subject-matter", the average secretary can do that kind of formatting with whatever computer and wordprocessor she's used to so you certainly don't need a DTP program to do it. >If NW6 allows me to put together a fully formatted document with >ease, then I'll buy it and be extremely happy. Otherwise, I'll >investigate my other options because I have to. At the risk of boring everyone, you can prepare a good-looking fully-formatted document with good old Nisus Compact! But obviously some aspects are much simplified if you use NW with its macros and whatnot. The one thing the existing version seems to lack (besides an outliner for those who need one) is a more sophisticated table tool. There are various other things which can be added, of course, and I can't speak for the efficiency of NW 5.x because I've never used it myself. My question to you would be "exactly what do you mean by 'fully formatted'?". Perhaps I should also ask "exactly what do you mean by 'ease'?" -- few things in life are quite as easy as we would like them to be but most become easier with practice and experience. Ever curious, Judyth ###################################################### Judyth Mermelstein "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..." Montreal, QC <espresso@e-scape.net> ######################################################
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