FM Replacement Future

[James Eric Lawson <eric@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been investigating replacements for FM lately, and am entertaining
various options.  All of the options entail trade-offs.  Note that I'm
concerned immediately with scientific articles, books, and website
publications, along with the usual word-processing applications (letters,
memos, etc.).  This means my focus is on the expedient creation and
maintenance of documents rich in equations and graphics, but such features
as indexing and conditional display are also important.  My choice will
have to be useful with minimal training and support by secretaries,
temporary workers and brain-dead Ph.D.'s alike.  Also, I think the open
source model is likely to become the only viable model for software
development, which is to say that I'm heavily biased toward open source
tools, but will consider any tool that stores output in non-proprietary
open standard formats (e.g., XML/XSL/CSS), so as to obviate many of the
problems associated with conversion of legacy documents.

The options I've been considering include

    OpenOffice (good prospect; xml creation with good equation editor,
    excellent drawing tool, graphing and presentation capabilities; robust
    development team and outstanding long-term utility prospects; Mac OS,
    Linux/Unix and Windows).  <http://www.openoffice.org/>

    Publicon (another good prospect, but definitely oriented toward
    scientific publications; not open source; excellent equation editor;
    would need to use third party drawing tools; only Linux and Windows so
    far, although a Mac OS version is reputed to be in the offing).
    <http://www.wolfram.com/products/publicon/index.html>

    LaTeX and friends (not so good; too much training and support
    needed; would need to use third party drawing tools; the big three
    platforms are supported).  See also Scientific Word
    <http://www.mackichan.com/index.html> and LyX <http://www.lyx.org/>.

    Serna (this appears to be another good prospect for my needs, but also
    seems somewhat immature; "True WYSIWYG XML Editor"; would need to use
    third party equation editor and drawing tool).
    <http://www.syntext.com/products/serna/index.htm>

    Scribus (limited prospect; doesn't seem suited to long document
    production; more similar to PageMaker and Quark than FM; only Linux
    and Mac OS X).  <http://www.scribus.org.uk/>

Thus far, it seems that OpenOffice offers the most suitable balance of
features and transparency (relative ease of training and support) for my
needs, but I suspect many current FM users, who don't commonly use
equation editors or integral drawing tools, would be more suited by
something like Serna.  Clearly though, if the FM user in question thinks
MS Word would do the job, albeit clumsily and accompanied by the stench of
an open wound, OpenOffice would be the best choice.

James Eric Lawson <cire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> System and Network
Administrator, Research Publications Editor University of Washington, Box
357962, Seattle WA  USA  98195
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I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.  -- Marshal McLuhan
I necessarily disagree with everything I say.  -- Deputy Dog

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