Re: [NTLK] Windows or Mac

From: Larry Yaeger (lsynewtal_at_beanblossom.in.us)
Date: Tue Oct 05 2004 - 12:46:27 PDT


At 8:01 PM +0100 10/5/04, Seb E. Payne wrote:
>I am really starting to plan out my computing infrastructure and I don't
>know which one, Mac or PC. Mac lacks some software of PCs and the majority
>of users around me are PC but Mac is better interface.

I'm biased, no doubt, but I definitely prefer Macs. And, yeah, OS
X's interface is a downright pleasure to use these days.

I could point to a dozen or more features, but for the networking
alone I'd never give up my Mac; I use it on multiple LANs, both wired
and WiFi, and I just leave the networking preference set to
"Automatic" and it always takes advantage of the best current method
of connecting me to the internet no matter where I am. Amazing,
really, compared to how things used to be for the Mac (and still are
for the PC, I suspect).

Also, if you have any experience with unix, OS X really is unix
underneath. It's a huge benefit if unix is useful to you.

>Anyone know of a good semi-professional DTP?

It's pricey, but Adobe InDesign (and their whole "Creative Suite"
line, including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and GoLive) is
pretty powerful and reasonably easy to use. It's my wife who's
really the expert, but I'm pretty sure Illustrator is basically on
its way out, and InDesign is what's replacing it, though both still
come with the Creative Suite. And from what she has said (while
Desk-Top Publishing the local Humane Society newsletter), is that
InDesign is much easier to use, at least as powerful, and less buggy
than Illustrator ever was. So InDesign comes fairly highly
recommended.

I understand Framemaker for OS X has been discontinued, however,
which is problematic for more complex documentation/manual authoring.
Some people are moving to Word, some to LaTeX (particularly pdflatex
on OS X).

So Word or pflatex for major book authoring, that involves complex
cross-referencing, hierarchical styles tied to structure, etc., and
InDesign for graphic design, DTP, and everything else. I'm told that
Microsoft's XBox documentation was done with Adobe InDesign and
InCopy, for example.

- larryy

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