🚀 go-pugleaf

It looks like Aldus are joining the "look and feel" brigade. Here's a few
extracts from an article by Stuart Anderton on p 68 of the magazine "New
Computer Express", dated 13 October 1990, reviewing a product called
PagePlus, produced by a company called Serif. PagePlus is a DTP product;
although it doesn't implement the full functionality of a product like
Pagemaker it seems to be an excellent tool for doing single pages - eg
posters, flyers, etc - and incorporates some features which other systems
lack:

    "There are a few additions to the PageMaker scheme of things which raise
     PagePlus above the level of a mere clone. For a start, text can be
     rotated. Also, when you create temporary groups of objects by
     shift-clicking them you can scale the group together."

    "But most powerful is the property panel. This is an interactive dialogue
     box which lets you alter type's attributes and see the effects in real
     time. For instance you can highlight some text, select 'size' and use  a
     scroll bar to increase and decrease the typesize. As you pull the bar up
     and down the effect of your action are shown instantly on the screen."

Serif is targetted at 286 boxes and priced in the UK at 99 pounds. Aldus,
perhaps realising that it poses a threat to some of "their" market, have
adopted a now all-too-common tactic:

    "According to Aldus Corporation, creator of PageMaker, PagePlus resembles
     and operates much like PageMaker. It has threatened Serif with "any and
     all legal remedies" over the user interface of PagePlus for the Windows
     program and has demanded that Serif "refrain from marketing or
     distributing PagePlus until it is non-infringing"."

It should be noted that both PagePlus and PageMaker run under MS-Windows on
DOS machines, which enforces a certain degree of similarity anyway. Indeed
part of the point of a system like Windows is to provide a common envrinment
for applications. *All* Windows applications will have share some aspects of
their interface style. 

The other scary issue here is that Serif are a comparitively new company;
PagePlus is their only product and one which they've spent three years
developing. This looks to me like an established company trying to prevent a
start-up from getting into the market.

I suggest people contact Aldus condemning their behaviour over this matter,
as well as writing to the computer press. If Aldus get sufficient bad press
over the matter, they may be persuaded to back down. PagePlus is not released
until November 26th, so Aldus won't have hold of a copy before then :-). This
may leave us some time to act.

The person to contact, according to information I got from Aldus Europe (who
were very obliging) is:

	Kurt Blake,
	Aldus Corporation,
	Suite 200, 411 First Ave South,
	Seattle WA 98104.

	Phone: +1 206 628 2630
	Fax: +1 206 386 8886
	

--
Rick Innis, 		European League for Programming Freedom
rick@cstr.ed.ac.uk 	elpf-request@cstr.ed.ac.uk