🚀 go-pugleaf

> I claim that, for a wide range of publications, the traditional graphic-arts
> industry approach of cutting, pasting, and wysiwyg systems simply cannot be
> competitive with more software-intensive approaches such as embedded-command
> systems. You will be trading one programmer for 4 graphic artists.

What do you mean by "software-intensive" in this case?  Are you referring to
the embedded-command system as "software", or the embedded *commands* as
software?  (I.e., does the programmer in question work for the graphic-arts
company or the company that makes the machines they, or their clients, use?)
I agree that a system which merely computerizes the manual labor of pasteup,
etc. isn't the way to go.  However, I don't agree (and neither do you, I
assume, given your earlier statement that interactive systems *could* do
"automatic pasteup", etc. as well as an embedded-command system, even if
nobody ends up actually *making* such a system) that an embedded-command
system is the only alternative to such a system.  Given the choice between a
"JATO-assisted typewriter"-style WYSIWYG editor, and an embedded-command
system, it's not clear that the WYSIWYG editor is the superior choice;
however, given the choice between Interleaf and "full-frontal 'troff'", I'd
take Interleaf any day (*ceteris paribus*; machines which run Interleaf are
a bit expensive, which may be just as well as every such machine bought from
Sun helps support my somewhat profligate lifestyle :-)).

(Then again, why is the author of Scribe referring to them as
"embedded-COMMAND" systems rather than "embedded-markup" systems?  I thought
the whole point of systems like Scribe - or Interleaf - was that you didn't
have to "sweat the details"; you could let the DBA do the grunge work...)

	Guy Harris