Frame vs Indesign vs alternatives??
> so my boss wants to make sure we have all info > to present. > One important difference between InDesign and Frame has not been mentioned: InDesign takes typography seriously. If you're doing design for print, a large book in my case, this matters. Before CS4's introduction of cross-references (for end notes) InDesign was not a viable choice. Typography examples: 1. Frame scales down small caps, superscripts, and subscripts, even if the font contains carefully designed glyphs for these. They look cheesy. I couldn't find a way in Frame (v.8) to use the font glyphs without individually typing in code or copy-pasting from the Character Designer. InDesign lets you set a preference for which to use. 2. Same as 1 for ligatures. With InDesign you can automatically set every ligature the font contains, or only the common ones. Spell check continues to work even with ligatures displayed. 3. I'm yet to see InDesign set a footnote on the wrong page. 4. The hyphenation-justification engine for InDesign is more sophisticated than Frame's (and both are far superior to Word's) but the difference is too subtle for me to get excited about. One more thing--I've never seen any angst among the user community for InDesign about Adobe's continuing commitment to the product. Alan Barber
Re: FM8 seems to be sluggish on my PC
Well, it doesn't work that way for me. Laptop: four year old Sony, optimized for battery life over performance; 1.2 GHz, .5 GB RAM (!!), XP SP3; FM8p273. Desktop: Dual CPU 2.13 GHz, 4GB RAM, Vista SP1; FM8p277. With the desktop it takes six seconds to scroll across two 90character lines with Paragraph, Character, and Table Designers open. Also six seconds with all designers closed. Plus or minus a second. Tried it with Photoshop and Illustrator also open; same result. With the laptop, ten seconds with 'em open, six with 'em closed. A modest hit, I say, for a machine that's always sluggish. Maybe the complexity of the document matters. I used a single, fourteen page document with only four paragraph tags. No graphics, no tables. That desktop is by no means high performance. I bought a similar one for my wife last month for under $500. I've always found Vista to be very snappy, even as others have complained of sluggish performance. Alan Barber Richard Combs wrote: Your explanation makes sense, and suggests that the degree of slowdown will depend on how many different pgf and char tags the cursor moves through. There's a lot of information displayed in the Designer dialogs, and if it changes every few characters or lines... I *think* (not sure though) that FM seems to check *every* time the arrow key is pressed, regardless of whether there is an actual char tag that it moves through. So, it slows down even when simply moving along the same paragraph for example. ___ You are currently subscribed to Framers as arch...@mail-archive.com. Send list messages to fram...@lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscr...@lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to listad...@frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
FM8 seems to be sluggish on my PC
Well, it doesn't work that way for me. Laptop: four year old Sony, optimized for battery life over performance; 1.2 GHz, .5 GB RAM (!!), XP SP3; FM8p273. Desktop: Dual CPU 2.13 GHz, 4GB RAM, Vista SP1; FM8p277. With the desktop it takes six seconds to scroll across two 90character lines with Paragraph, Character, and Table Designers open. Also six seconds with all designers closed. Plus or minus a second. Tried it with Photoshop and Illustrator also open; same result. With the laptop, ten seconds with 'em open, six with 'em closed. A modest hit, I say, for a machine that's always sluggish. Maybe the complexity of the document matters. I used a single, fourteen page document with only four paragraph tags. No graphics, no tables. That desktop is by no means high performance. I bought a similar one for my wife last month for under $500. I've always found Vista to be very snappy, even as others have complained of sluggish performance. Alan Barber Richard Combs wrote: > Your explanation makes sense, and suggests that the degree of slowdown will depend on how many different pgf and char tags the cursor moves through. There's a lot of information displayed in the Designer dialogs, and if it changes every few characters or lines... I *think* (not sure though) that FM seems to check *every* time the arrow key is pressed, regardless of whether there is an actual char tag that it moves through. So, it slows down even when simply moving along the same paragraph for example.
a new Dell PC
I second the advice about not using a wireless keyboard. I had one with my previous Dell and my current HP. Both would occasionally skip letters. After typing a paragraph I'd have to go back to find the missing letters. I tried posioning the transceiver everywhere; no luck. When I installed a wired keyboard the problem went away. The wireless mouse, on the other hand, is reliable and a great invention. My experience with Vista has been mostly positive. I got it on my HP when I replaced my Dell six months ago. The only problems I can pin on Vista are incompatible programs (backup) and printer drivers that were not initially available. FM 6 runs fine. I like the Vista user interface and the search is great. And it boots and loads programs MUCH faster. Clock speed and memory are about the same as the Dell, but the new HP is dual core with a bigger cache. Maybe that's it. The DVD burner has been very unreliable. I'm now on the fourth one. A second DVD reader would be very cheap. I bought RAID and would not do it again. I have it configured as level 1, for reliability, but reviews I've read suggest the Intel hw/fw is no more reliable than the disks themselves. The problem I've had comes after a power failure or when I have to reboot the system using the power switch (often when troubleshooting those burners). About half the time when the system comes up the RAID goes through a disk verification that takes an hour and a half. The system is unuseable during the first hour and merely slow during the remaining time. I use two layers of backup in addition to the RAID. I would remove it if I weren't so timid... Alan
