From: john@wpa.com (John Bartley)
Subject: Re: Seybold Conference and Exposition
Reply-To: john@wpa.com (John Bartley)
Organization: Workgroup Productivity Associates
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 22:58:15 GMT

In article <22542@galaxy.ucr.edu> mikes@velo.ucr.edu (Mike Shebanek)  
writes:
> In article <2AC121DB.A8D@deneva.sdd.trw.com> thomsen@spf.trw.com  
(Mark Thomsen)  
> writes:
> > Bill Smith writes
> > > So, someone attending, tell us what is happening there!
> > 
> > Yes, please - inquiring minds want to know - details!
> > 
> > Heard from three attendees that NeXT is having "a good day" -
> > but hardly any details.
> > 
> > Mark R. Thomsen
> 
> I'm not there but Lt. Sullivan says alpha versions of NISUS' word  
processor for  
> NeXTSTEP will make an appearance.  What a relief!  Finally a worthy  
word  
> processor for NeXTSTEP!!!
> 
> If anybody had a chance to see it I'd love to know how it looks.

Hmmmm. I didn't see it and didn't hear anybody talking about it.

The NeXT-related area of interest at Seybold had to do with Image  
editing software. There were 3 apps on display and RightBrain announced  
they they will bring out Photosynthesis (NeXT front-end to Artisan.)

Appsoft Image was darn impressive. The things I saw demoed were what  
we've been waiting for since NeXTWORLD Expo. The only problem is, Image  
still isn't shipping. PixelMaster and Retouche were also on display in  
the NeXT booth. PixelMaster had some really nice features, as did  
Retouche. The people there from both of these companies seemed pretty  
sharp - there were some very interesting conversations.

Pages and Paste-Up were also demoed - Pages had a seprate booth in  
addition to their presence in the NeXT booth. The impression I got from  
the Pages demo was that it still had some work to do before it was  
ready for public consumption. Paste-Up is supposedly very close to  
shipping. Best demo "trick" of the show: Jack Reynolds showing off  
Paste-Up's ability to directly edit text that has been runaround a  
grapic while skewed, rotated and reversed. (Something we've all been  
secretly been wanting to do :-) ) Try doing that in FrameMaker.

Speaking of Frame....probably the most depressing part of the show for  
NeXT fans. The focus of their show was Frame for Windows. They were  
demonstrating their new FrameBuilder app. I asked when it would be  
available for NeXT. The answer was....NOT. It seems like an increasing  
number of the large software vendors are just in idle mode regarding  
development for NeXT. This is great news for the smaller developers,  
but bad news for users and resellers who could benefit from having  
these "family" apps available on NeXT. 

One of the reasons I went to Seybold was to see what was available in  
dye sublimation printers. There were a bunch of them - Iris, RasterOps,  
Sinko, Kodak, and some others less memorable were all on display. Some  
of these are at the same price points that 300 dpi thermal wax printers  
were during the last year or two. So - figure it out - it won't be long  
before these puppies become very widespread. The output quality and  
flexibility certainly outclass the current crop of thermal wax, inkjet,  
and bubble jet printers. I can hardly wait.

John Bartley
john@wpa.com
 
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