The following is the results of a survey conducted on the PAGEMAKR Bitnet listserv in the fall of 1992. The survey form can be found in the file SURVEY.TXT in the archives on the anonymous FTP site WUARCHIVE.WUSTL.EDU in the misc\doc\pagemakr directory. A quick note concerning the scoring processes. Many of the questions asked to choose the best of several different options. Well -- as we all know -- it is oftentimes hard to choose which one is the best. Thus, if you said Corel Draw and Freehand were your favorite Draw programs, each recieved an equal point. Thus, there may be some questions that have more positive votes than the total number of respondents. On the first three questions (your favorite platforms) many of you ranked the different platforms. To resolve this problem, I developed a simple point system: 4 for first place, 3 for second, 2 for third and 1 for fourth. For all of you who listed more than one but did not distinguish any preferences, each one received a value of 4. I think everything will even out in the end. If you have not filled out an application and would like to be part of it, please let me know. I will mail you the form or you can get it from the FTP site listed above. Thanks again for all those people who contributed their time in making this interesting survey! Geof. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #1 -- Which platform do you use? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Macintosh based : (196 points) 46 First Places, 4 Second Places PC-based : (159 Points) 35 First Places, 5 Second Places 2 Third Place Unix-based : ( 44 Points) 8 First Place, 4 Second Places NeXT-based : ( 5 Points) 1 First Place, 1 Third Place Comment: The clear winner here (as in the other questions) was the Macintosh. The interesting aspect to this question is the high number of people who do use PC and Macintosh bases simultaneously. Compare the total number for the PC with this question to the total for question #3. This suggests to me that, at least among our sample, the Macintosh is the favorite platform even among people who use both the PC and the Macintosh. I apologize in not including other platforms such as VAX/VMS. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #2 -- Which platform do you prefer for DTP? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Macintosh based : (194 Points) 47 First Places, 2 Second Places PC-based : ( 78 Points) 16 First Places, 4 Second Places 1 Third Place NeXT-based : ( 7 Points) 1 First Place, 1 Second Place Unix-based : ( 7 Points) 1 Second Place, 2 Third Places Comment: Its no major surprise that the Macintosh took the clear lead here. I think the interesting item is that the Mac received very few second place votes; if you use a Mac for DTPing, then it is the favorite. Also note that Unix machines drop considerably from the first question -- not many people on the list use the UNIX stations for desktop publishing ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #3 -- Which platform do you prefer overall? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Macintosh based : (184 Points) 43 First Places, 4 Second Places PC-based : ( 86 Points) 18 First Places, 4 Second Places 1 Third Place Unix-based : ( 17 Points) 3 First Places, 1 Second Place 1 Third Place NeXT-based : ( 4 Points) 1 First Place Comment: Notice that the PCs have a slight rise here in comparison to the previous question. Evidently a slight number of people feel that the Macintosh is best for DTP but the PC-based machine are better overall. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #4 -- Are you subscribed yet or plan to subscribe to Quark? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes : 10 votes No : 48 votes Comment: Roughly a fourth of the Pagemaker members are interested in both lists. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #5 -- Your favorite DTP program (Pagemaker, Quark, etc): ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Aldus Pagemaker : 59 votes Framemaker : 4 votes Ventura Publisher : 3 votes QuarkXPress : 2 votes Comment: I am somewhat surprised that Quark finished at the bottom of the list. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #6 -- Your favorite Draw program (Corel, MicroGraphix): ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Freehand : 20 votes Corel Draw : 12 votes Illustrator : 8 votes Canvas : 7 votes SuperPaint : 4 votes MicroGraphix : 3 votes (Draw and Designer) MacDraw : 3 votes (Pro and II) HP Paintbrush : 1 vote Windows Draw : 1 vote Kid-Pix : 1 vote Comment: This is pretty valuable for those of you in the market for a draw program. I know that some are paint programs, but the separation is becoming a little more uncertain. Personally, I am surprised that MicroGraphix did not place higher -- with all the hype they give themselves. I also like the Kid-Pix -- the person said they use it for all of the simple stuff. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #7 -- Your major in college (if you attended): ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Prenote: JEEZ! I am amazed at the wide range of majors available here! This is a pretty diverse group. I have attempted to break down the majors into general areas -- please forgive me if I have misplaced your degree; some of them I have never even heard of. (For instance, philosophy -- is it a science or an art?) The Sciences / Engineering (27) (12) Computer Science/MIS (2) Mathematics (2) Psychology (2) Urban Studies/Planning (2) Zoology (1) Anthropology (1) Biology (1) Electrical Engineering (1) Geography (1) Library Sciences (1) Medical Laboratory Sciences (1) Physics (1) Social Sciences (1) Sociology The Arts (26) (8) English (7) Communications / Journalism (4) Foreign Lang. (1 each in German, Spanish, Japanese, French) (2) History/Government (2) Philosophy (2) Religion (1) Music (1) Painting (1) Technical Writing Education (8) (3) Education (1) Education Administration (1) Education Counseling (1) Health Education (1) Instructional Technology Business Related (6) (3) Business (1) Accounting (1) Management (1) Advertising The big majors are Computer Science, English and Journalism. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- QUESTION #8 -- What one (or two) capabilities do you feel that Pagemaker should possess in the next release? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Prenote: You guys and gals offered an endless number of suggestions. I have tried to include and organize them below. The most often responses were (with the number of votes): (19) Better Text and/or Graphic Rotation (12) Multiple Documents capabilities (7) Grouping and locking capabilities. (4) Better color separation (4) More drawing features (Polygons, Freehand, etc.) (3) Better page numbering capabilities (3) Decent internal macro/automation/scripting language (2) View more than 2 pages at once (2) Suspend Screen Redraw It is good news that Aldus is (rumored to be) addressing several of these items with PageMaker 5.0. Of the remaining suggestions, each was mentioned only once. A few are for capabilities already available! My comments are in [brackets]. Here they are: Improvements ------------- 1) A *REAL* drops caps capability 2) Better import filters, better ascii export filters 3) Faster 4) Better Tab Rulers 5) More helpful manual 6) Better Internal accuracy (0 doesn't equal 0 but 0.01!) 7) Ability to search/replace for hard returns. 8) Scroll-down Pull down menus, as in the type menu when you have a lot of fonts. 9) Better ability to handle long tables such as ones that are more than one page long 10) Swift on-screen thumbnail display to correspond with the printer version 11) More additions! 12) Decent Kerning 13) Erase text using the Del key instead of only the backspace 14) Multiple master pages 15) Better Table handling 16) Either seriously release Table Editor or don't include it! 17) Better file translations between Mac and PC. 18) To be able to select all the text from the curson position to the end of the text, or from the cursor position to the beginning of text. [This can be done currently, but not at a keystroke.] 19) Apply fills to text Advancements ------------- 1) Ability to lock the order of layers. (So that even if you edit an object it will stay in its layer.) 2) Connecting a text block of one style with text of another style. [I think that this can already be done -- perhaps they mean to have multiple styles in paragraphs.] 3) Auto figure numbering 4) Page copy option 5) Copy Guides from Page... option 6) Printing to be subprocessesed so that you can continue to work instead of waiting for it to print. 7) Inter-Application Connection [Not sure what this means] 8) Read my mind [not too much to ask, no?] 9) Importing of Word Tables, Equations 10) Tear off pull-down menus 11) Context sensitive menus -- such as in MS Excel 4.0 for PC 12) New Menu with all the shortcuts on it 13) SGML capability 14) Dynamic references to figures and pages 15) Context sensitive headers. (Headers that continue until a specific tag, such as can be done in Ventura) 16) A real page imposition system for making booklets 17) Allow different page sizes in the same document 18) Color-coded numbers to allow you to figure out how multiple text blocks of the same document are linked together. (Go beyond the hearts and +'s). 19) Convert a character or text block to support Text Wrap on them. (Like drop caps) This is a great bunch of suggestions. If you have any other ones, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will add them. I hope that we can create a group letter to Aldus to relay these messages sometime in the near future. That is the end of the survey portion. I am going to try to also add a summary of the different professions from your biographies when I get a chance. I hope this has been informing... Geof.