Re: Why Interleaf?

[Robert Plamondon <robert -at- PLAMONDON -dot- COM>]

Interleaf is to FrameMaker as FrameMaker is to Word for Windows.
In particular, it's best for multi-person documentation projects,
multi-document suites, technical illustration, and getting things
done very quickly if the people using it are properly trained
(or self-trained).

(A friend of mine who does DTP for a living estimates
bread-and-butter DTP tasks (formatting, format conversion,
illustration, layout) as taking only half the time in Interleaf
as frame, based on Interleaf's powerful, built-for-speed feature set.)

Interleaf's weaknesses are poor color support, a weak charting system,
and the requirement for a few hours' training to begin to use it
successfully.

Interleaf 5.4 is "real" Interleaf -- Interleaf 6 uses "standard
user intefaces" such as Motif, thus eliminating context-sensitive
pop-up menus, obscuring your terminal with toolboxes, and generally
dumbing down the user interface.  The other strengths are still
there, but productivity plummets because the user interface becomes
just as stodgy as Frame's or Word's or PageMaker's.  (But Interleaf
had a change of management, and maybe they'll support both
interfaces -- the fast one, and the standard one -- in a future
release).

Of course, as the high-end system, Interleaf experience is in less
demand than Frame experince, just as Frame is in less demand than
Word.  On the other hand, the supply-to-demany ratio may be even
more out of sync -- I know several people with independent DTP
business, and they're all swamped with Interleaf-based work.

        -- Robert