Re: [docbook] DocBook and Publishing Software

["Rajal Shah" <rajal@meshsoftware.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Whitlatch" <swhitlat@getnet.net>
To: "David White" <davidw@kencook.com>; "Bill Lawrence" 
<lawrence@mayaviz.com>
Cc: <docbook@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 1:42 PM
Subject: RE: [docbook] DocBook and Publishing Software
>
> * On-screen display in Epic Editor is controlled for most Epic users with 
> FOSI.
> My impression, but not necessarily my knowledge, is that FOSI is old,
> unsupported, arcane, etc. You will probably pay dearly for a FOSI expert 
> who can
> make your on-screen document appearance in Epic Editor look WYSIWYG, but 
> that
> too is just my impression. And any new investments in time and effort with 
> FOSI
> are probably poor choices. Someone can correct me if I have this wrong, 
> but when
> using Epic Editor and FOSI, your print output is what you see on screen 
> with
> your online FOSI, but I do think it is not that simple. You can set up the
> system any way you want, and you can make it different for different 
> doctypes.
>


RAJAL ==>> We use Epic extensively.. The FOSI that you use for PRINT does 
not give you the WYSIWYG feature as you'd expect.. I think the reason is 
that EPIC needs Adobe Distiller to generate PDF.. So for the same FOSI - the 
editing/authoring pane in EPIC gives you some formatting/layout that you can 
work with but it's not the same when you do a "Compose to PDF" (Print 
Preview) with it..

This feature by itself makes FramkeMaker+XML extremely attractive to me, 
cause I'm assuming that they'd be the only one who could get us to WYSIWYG.. 
(as long as PDF is the print format).. But alas, I'm not sure where Adobe 
stands with Framemake and its support to seriously consider it.

--
Rajal