Ventura Redux

[Mike Christie <mikec -at- SYNTEL -dot- COM>]

My apologies to those who responded to my suggestion for a Ventura mailing
list. I had intended to reply directly, but I got into a bind installing
WinWord 6.0, and had to delete my digest files. In any case, there's
obviously interest in a Ventura list, but not from anyone who has access to
a list server, and could manage such a list. *sigh*

More on Ventura:
My copy of Venturian, the newsletter of the New York VPUG (I'm on the West
Coast, but it's well worth the $10 a year for the nl) arrived today and
reprinted part of Corel's mailing announcing the Corel 5.0 upgrade. As we
already knew, VP will only be sold as part of the Corel package. According
to the announcement, upgrades for non-Corel-Draw VP users will be $449, or
$349 if you're willing to receive only a CD-ROM and no diskettes. Corel
listed "50 Reasons to Buy CorelDRAW 5.0," only 11 of which were under the
Ventura Publisher heading. (If there's interest I'll list what's on that
part of the list.)

The unattractive price for those of us who are creating long documents with
only basic graphics and screen captures raises the question: is it time to
move to Frame?

Does anyone out there have experience converting from Ventura to Frame? Does
Frame Windows version provide a filter to import VP-Win files? How easy is
the transition to Frame for a VP user? What other considerations should I
be looking at.

With a street price of around $599, it would be relatively easy for me to
make the case to management for going to Frame, especially since there is
no assurance that if VP is not successful as part of Corel Draw, that Corel
will continue to support it. (Perhaps someone could persuade me that I'm
wrong on this last point, and that Corel has an unalterable committment
to VP-Win. :-) )

Mike Christie
Technical Writer
Syntelligence Systems, Inc.
mikec -at- syntel -dot- com