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>I ran into an article pointing out that Arbortext Epic
>a) is expensive (at least $20-50K; another article says it'll cost
>100K for five users)
>b) comes with an editor that is only slightly better than Notebad
>and
>c) has no control over page breaks.
>
>Is this true?
Not as far as I know, at least not for the authoring components. If you're looking for a complete publishing solution (composition engine, content repository, authoring tools, schema/DTD, FOSI, and XSLT), $100K sounds a bit more realistic. But you might not need all of that. It just depends on what your company needs.
>What would be the best choice? FM+Webworks? Authorit? (How serious
>is the fact that AIT won't output XML?) I'm relatively new to the
>field and have no real experience of any of these.
What do you need to produce? How much contents? What output format? If it's online, what OSes and viewers/browsers do you need to support? Does your company require information in a form that can be shared among various content experts?
It all boils down to this: you have to determine what your company needs before you make any purchasing decisions. I'm a big fan of Frame and WWP, but in some situations that combination is overkill. In others, that combination isn't robust enough. It depends on the circumstance.
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