Re: Linux and/or BSD alternatives to Frame?

[Larry Kollar <Larry.Kollar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:55 AM -0600 3/24/99, Banttari, Ananda wrote:

>My fiance and I are a couple of die-hard Framers who are looking for
>something Frame-like and/or Frame-compatible that will run on Linux
>or on Free BSD. (The local BSD guru tells us that many programs
>compiled for Linux will run on BSD.) This will be on the Wintel box
>at home.

Don't rule out OpenBSD -- especially if you have a cable modem or
other semi-permanent connection. It's the most secure open-source
OS distribution.

I don't think there's anything of FrameMaker's caliber that runs on
Linux or *BSD, unless Frame itself will run (and I've heard it doesn't
do very well). While LyX (www.lyx.org) and AbiWord (www.abisource.com)
aren't Frame-like, they're worth a look. LyX in particular imposes a
structured editing environment, but it's LaTeX-centric rather than SGML.
Several SGML/XML editors are available as well. If you use an SGML
editor, you could transfer structured documents to & from FrameMaker.

I used to maintain hundreds of pages of documentation using nroff. I
hacked the -ms macros (calling the result -mss) to create a company
format. I also created a pile of csh/awk scripts, with a couple of
functions rewritten in C for speed, for various supporting roles.
If I were doing something similar today, I'd use either XML or LaTeX,
with TCL/Tk (or Perl/Tk) for support scripts. Given that today's
desktop systems are much faster than that Sun 1 I shared with four
programmers, I probably wouldn't bother with compiling anything. :-)

Good luck!

	Larry.Kollar@arris-i.com



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