Conference 7.286::digital

    Re: .0
    
    Well said!!!  Everything there applies for people in Digital offices,
    too.  A large number of trees have to be killed every week because of
    information that shows up in formats that can't be displayed on a
    typical PC screen.
    
    Brian Pituley
    

    Jim-
    
    Please give this feedback to the Sales Workbench team also, they can
    help in screening the inbound information knowing what we have out
    here.  
    
    Part of the root cause issues with receiving presentations, proposals
    etc. which fall outside of the formats we have on out new PC's is that
    the architects of the information are not using what we have in our
    hands.  A sure recipe for problems.  So, please give the feedback
    through the utility in SWB and they will hear it also.
    
    I agree they are beautiful machines and are great to use with customers
    in presentations and reviewing lots of inforation on Digital with them.
    
    Mav

The architects probably don't HAVE what you have.

			Steve

    Let's look at this from another angle. If you need the information,
    it is YOUR job to customize your work environment to do your job..
    What you received is a good foundation, not everything you could ever
    need! Be flexible, ask how to accomplish things that you currently
    can't. All of the things you are having problems with can be resolved.
    Don't seek to change the world when a small effort on your part can 
    get you what you need.
    Don't complain about such minor things. Just ask you local MCS engineer
    what tools he/she has to work with, you'll be glad you have what you
    have.
    -Brian

wait a second...I'm not a sales person, but it seems to me that we ought
to be accomidating to the sales staff...do we really expect them to sit
around and figure out how to manipulate a 132 column report they need to
help close a sale all day?  I agree with the base noter...we need to get in
front of customers with color Powerpoint Presentations, not black and white
transparencies on overheads....they need information that is immediately
accessable and 'ready to roll'...we should be presenting information to
customers in a uniform way...not in a myriad of different formats because
the sales staff are all engaging in 'roll yer own' page formating and 
spending all night and day trying to convert .DDIF files into something
they can read and print in Microsoft Word.

But, as always, just my opinion...

-Stephen

We need to meet somewhere in the middle.
I agree that providing only postscript is a problem, as
it is not generally modifiable. (I know, there are some
people who can manipulate raw postscript, but they are not the 
norm.)

On the other hand, as an engineer, my life is spent in front of
a UNIX workstation.  I only recently got a PC, and it may not
last.  I don't know.  It is not considered essential for my job.
So the chances of me hunting down a PC somwehere, and spending half
a day squatting in someone else's office so that I can produce a document
using a foreign (to me) application is minimal.

Let me propose a compromise:

Information providers should ALWAYS provide their content in at LEAST 
two forms:  Native to the tool you use, be that Word, PowerPoint,
WordPerfect, PostScript, DOCUMENT, whatever
and
Plain text.

In a pinch, you can take a plain text document and use it in whatever
tool you have at hand.  It may be a pain, but it is possible.

The only exceptions would be content (such as manuals and SPDs) which
 SHOULD NOT BE MODIFIED, as they constitute, in some cases, legal 
bindings, and should not be altered to suit an individual sale.

Kevin

    I empathize with the base noter, although things may not be quite as
    bad as he made it sound. I've already put feedback into the programs
    about a number of things that I've found useful and have added to my
    environment. Some folks (I hesitate to say that this was the standard 
    for the program, but I thought it was) have received their new DEClaser 
    5100 printers, which will automatically handle the printing of postscript
    files, as well as anything that you can put out from a desktop
    application.
    
    I recommended GhostScript, which is available on many Internet sites
    and is an excellant Postscript Viewer/Printer utility. I also
    recommended WINZIP for those .zip files that we all will hit on the
    I-way. It is shareware (about $40/50 to register) that is also available 
    on many On-line services and the Inet. Also, I find a utility like 
    Drag and View to be very helpful. Drag and View allows the viewing of 
    the contents of files that were created in about 40 different formats, 
    including .WRI files, .DOC files, .JPG, .GIF and several other graphics 
    formats, all without needing the original application. Drag and View is 
    shareware and is available from many locations (costs about $40. to 
    register). I have also found a little shareware program called WINprint
    (registration cost about $20.) to be helpful, since it lets me print
    files 2-up or 4-up on a page, which saves paper on longer,
    documentation type files.
    
    It was my recommendation that the program fund a "corporate license"
    approach to these shareware utilities/programs, so that we could get
    the best deal for them and so that the program could perhaps take some
    responsibility for supporting them (shareware is notoriously lite on
    support). This is probably the best example of an area that may not
    have been completely thought out before the program was launched. The
    support of the needs of the happy home alone campers are going to be
    all over the spectrum. We've created thousands of little systems
    managers out of folks, many of whom were not completely comfortable
    with operating the on-off switch on a VT terminal. I can probably
    provide support for my fellow team members on my little sales team, but
    I don't see enough of us (a wantta-be tech-weenie & home-PC hobbiests) 
    around to support everybody.    
    
    -OFWAMI-
                                

    re: -.1
    
    Could you please give a pointer to any internet site which has
    "Ghostscript"?  That would be a very useful tool.
    
    Thanks,
    Mike

    Pointers to Ghostscript:
    
    Available after
        hours U.S. Eastern Time as usual...
    
        tarkin::acad77:[lin.public]gs333*.zip,gsview12.zip  (about 7600
    blocks)
    
        GS333FN1.ZIP;1         2668/2668     2-AUG-1994 01:47:00.00
        GS333FN2.ZIP;1         1448/1448     2-AUG-1994 01:47:00.00
        GS333INI.ZIP;1          979/980     14-APR-1995 13:19:00.00
        GS333W32.ZIP;1          590/592     18-APR-1995 12:56:00.00
        GS333WIN.ZIP;1          840/840     17-APR-1995 17:58:00.00
        GSVIEW12.ZIP;1         1114/1116    18-APR-1995 20:37:00.00
    
    Discussed in humane::ibmpc_shareware, note 1592 and others.
    
    Greg

    Instead of giving those people that are trying to provide you with
    information to help you do your job a difficult time, how 'bout going
    to your Corporate Sales Staff and have them develope the databases that
    DON'T produce the information you need in these types of format....		
    
    CIC Reports, and other things only come in 132 column.  To my knowledge
    there is no way to "tell" these systems to limit the data to 80 column.
    
    Once again, it's the systems NOT the people.....
    
    Just mine.....JPs
    

    There are a number of excellant Notes Conferences that every person
    with one of these mobile office systems should be aware of and a few
    internal Inet sites that are helpful. On my list are the following:
    
    NOTES Conferences to join -
    
    NOTED::IBMPC-95
    NOTED::MSWINDOWS
    NOTED::IBMPC_Shareware
    RANGER::WFW
    
    INET Sites to visit
    
    ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com
    ftp://winnah.mro.dec.com
    
    The winnah site is a mirror or the largest collection of PC
    shareware/freeware avaqilable on the INET and all of what I talked
    about earlier is probably there somewhere. The index alone is 40+
    pages, so you can imagine how much SW is out there. It obviously helps
    if you know what you're going after. The Notes conferences provide a
    good place to ask questions and get pointers to SW that may solve a
    problem. It was in these notes files that I first heard about
    Ghostscript and was provided the pointers to go find it.
    
    -OFWAMI-

    Hi, Jim! (note .0), I've had the same problem, but it's normally resolved
    by bringing the document down through the VTX Integrated Repository,
    which does apply those standards to the documents going in. The new
    Catalog in the Sales Workbench allows you to select from the available
    formats, and many are available in MS Word or .PPT files. If there
    isn't a document in the SWB catalog, and you can identify it in IR, you
    can request the document by number. Check the main screen in VTX IR for
    information on getting the file number.
    
    Hi, Joannie! (.10)  I use a customized query from CICS to get 80 column
    reports, or to send a file which I can insert into an ACCESS database.
    That uses the PRINT ST method from CICS, but you have to do a litle
    formatting first. That's written up in the user information portion of
    the CICS memo. (Or you can give ol' unka Bill a call!)
    
    (PERSONAL TO JOAN: Mark is moving and needs some help - coming down
    this weekend?)
    
    Bill Kimbel
    TOEM Sales
    Southeast US
    

                     <<< Note 4003.10 by MSDOA::SCRIVEN >>>

>    Once again, it's the systems NOT the people.....
 
	Sometimes it IS the people.

	A while back I recieved a "customer satisfaction survey request" from 
	a group that supports our business.

	The survey form was in Postscript and the subject line in the mail
	message provided a fax number where we could send the completed
	survey.

	Yeah Right. I'm going extract this form, print it out, fill it out,
	then go find a fax machine and stand there to make sure it gets
	transmitted. Sorry, this customer was dissatisfied with the survey.

Jim

>>Our world doesn't revolve around a PC (yet)

I think the base noter is pointing out that now, the sales force's world
does indeed revolve around the PC.  And gee, I kind of like the idea of
helping to increase their productivity, because it translates into more
revenue for this company, and right now, we need every red cent.

I like Kevin's idea, in the future, we should work towards making information
available and in a format so that all users, including those on PC's, can use
the information without having to jump through a lot of hoops.  If we do require
PC users to jump through some formatting hoops, we really ought to standardize
on how it's done and deliver and support tools to do this.  Again, IMO, it's
very important that the sales force presents information about Digital and
it's products in a uniform way to our customers.

As a system manager, I think it's important that we try not to push back
on the user all the time as a matter of course, but accomidate them or
compromise on a solution as Kevin has suggested.

-Stephen

    I believe that the Integrated Repository (VTX IR) is supporting Adobe's
    PDF (Portable Document Format).  Adobe supplies the Reader for FREE. 
    Therefore, on a PC a user can VIEW and PRINT, moreover, they can print
    to their favorite printers, which in most cases is HP-PCL NOT Postscritp.
    
    The Distriller, that runs on a PC, will convert a PostScript document
    to PDF.  I believe anyone supply documents within the corporation should
    make PostScript and something viewable on a PC.  Our organization can
    access any postscript document, distll it, and view it on a PC.  We're
    NOT limited to the format.  We're making most Digital documents
    available to our Business Partners available in PDF format because
    they're PC and HP-PCL users.
    

    Adobe PDF files are readable ONLY on regular Windows.
    
    No reader for Alpha anything (VMS or Unix or NT).
    
    No reader for Windows NT anything (even Intel Windows NT).
    
    No distiller on any of the above.
    
    Only Unix support is on the "market leaders" (Sun, HP, IBM).
    
    Unless somebody fixes at least some of the above, PDF files are a
    non-starter for much of Digital.
    
    Steveg

Regarding the Postscript issue:

Along with the Information Repository, we in the Sales Workbench effort are 
trying to establish a new defacto standard that relies on Adobe Acrobat 
format (PDF) for those documents that the author requires to be 
"read-only".

For those documents that don't need that restriction, then we're 
encouraging the MS-Office formats (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) as the native 
format.  

Other items to consider is that version 2.0 of NetScape is supposed to 
support PDF directly - as more and more information sources move to an 
internet base, this will extend the accessibility.

As far as information providers not having access to the tools, we are 
openly communicating this defacto standard as best we can.  I would 
certainly expect any responsible information provider to first study the 
toolset his target audience has (although we all know this doesn't always 
happen) - We're also seeing more and more groups begin to adopt the Sales 
Workbench suite as their standard, so more and more people will come to 
accept this set of tools as the "Digital Workbench" over time.

Curtis Martin,
ABU Sales Productivity Tools Manager
(Sales Workbench Manager)

    I'm probably overlooking something here, but...

    Why can't this material be entered and distributed as plain text???
    I realize that there is some material that can't be handled that
    way (graphs, etc.), but I see *lots* of postscript/favorite-format-du-jour
    stuff that doesn't need special fonts or graphics.  It'd be a lot more
    accessible if it was a plain old ascii text file.  I'm quite confident
    that tools exist on *all* our platforms to enter and read such files.

						cheryl

>    Unless somebody fixes at least some of the above, PDF files are a
>    non-starter for much of Digital.
 
    I wouldn't exactly describe PDF as a non-starter within Digital as
    we at LinkWorks have started about 6 months ago. All our standard
    documentation is provided through PDF both to the customer and
    internally.
    
    Our overriding reason for providing PDF was based on customer focus:
    this is a format that customers have little difficulty accessing.
    We assumed (and still assume) htat everyone in Digital has at least
    occasional access to a PC since you can generate postscript from the
    PDF.
    
    As a previous posting pointed out PDF support is coming from Netscape,
    also  Ghostscript is putting in PDF support. Finally, we expect Adobe
    will bringup Windows NT support but we don't know when.
    
    Initially we did get complaints from the field (but not from
    customers!) but they dried up either because they got used to it 
    after all or because the field saw that we were 
    standing by our decision - you take your pick.
    
    re roelof

    re: .20
    
    I didn't say PDF is a non-starter, just that unless stuff gets fixed it
    will be.  From what .20 and others is saying, things are getting fixed
    (at least for the reader part - the PDF writer stuff depends on Adobe).
    
    LinkWorks documentation is a special case in that anybody that wants to
    look at is already into Windows (probably regular Windows -- not using
    LinkWorks, I don't know if it does NT).

Standards and Methods Control (Digital Standards and other internally 
distributed documents) checking in here ...  

  We recently made about 500 of our documents available via the WWW (for
  those with Netscape browsers) in PDF format.  Windows and Mac Netscape 
  users can configure their environment by:

    1.	Installing the freely available Acrobat Reader 

    2.	Setting their helper application to use the Reader with PDF files. 

  I used Acrobat Distiller to convert PS files to corresponding PDF.

    		 http://www.ljo.dec.com/SMC/smc_docs.html 

  - Jim 

ghostscript 3.33 supports PDF files and I use daily on UNIX (Digital UNIX
and other BSDs...).  So I wouldn't say there isn't a reader.

><<< Note 4003.18 by WMGEN1::abs001p2.nqo.dec.com::Curtis Martin "ABU/CBS Sales IM&T" >>>
>                    -< PDF & MS-Office as defacto standard >-

> I would 
>certainly expect any responsible information provider to first study the 
>toolset his target audience has (although we all know this doesn't always 
>happen) 

Just for completeness, and not to throw stones....

    I would 
   certainly expect any responsible information CONSUMER to first study the 
   toolset his target INFORMATION PROVIDER has 

and select tools accordingly.  
The problem is, of course, that we are ALL information 
providers AND consumers, and we operate in different 
circles with different information exchange requirements.
No common subset of tools has yet been agreed, because every circle
has different needs.
For example, don't expect to get specs or schedules from me (an engineer) 
in anything except a final form (read only) format.  
Right now that means PostScript or PDF.
If a salesman or sales support person needs these items from me,
he's going to get them in the form that was optimal for me and my EXPECTED
audience (and these items would not normally be EXPECTED to go to the field,
but they might have to in particular circumstances).

But congratulations on having a plan at all.  The existence of something
called a Sales Workbench is a long-overdue first step.

- tom]

Re: .18

"As far as information providers not having access to the tools, we are
openly communicating this defacto standard as best we can."

So, from this I take it that:
1) "openly communicating this defacto standard" == "Everybody in the world
    should do it my way"  seems pretty arrogant to me...

2) You seem to believe that there is some connection between you demanding
   that documents come in some particular, idiosynchratic (in my workd) format,
   and PC hardware magically appearing on my desktop.  Maybe you should
   have a chat with the person who valliantly tries to get us the tools we
   NEED to do our main charter - software engineering, and explain why he
   should spend more of our slim budget on tools to keep you from having to 
   do the conversions...

3) The more I read this statement the less sense it makes.  In response to a    
   concern that providers do not have access to tools required to do what you
   ask, you repeat the demand that they use your format.  Makes not sense to me.
   Tell me how you can help me support you, and we'll be going somewhere.


There seems to be an assuption there that everyone in the company has access to
PCs, and that if they do not choose to put out materials in PDF, they are
being lazy and uncooperative.  That is just not the case.  Many groups do NOT
have universal access to PCs.  Please give some thought as to how a
non-PC-centric group can easily provide materials that will be of benefit to the
Sales-Workbench audience, and you'll be helping everybody.  As it is, you seem 
to just be throwing stones.

Kevin Farlee

i put the original note in here at the request of several others, including
Sales Workbench, who said this conference was read by many and would 
facilitate the greatest change toward the goal of sharing information so 
the field can use it.  my natural curiousity made me log back in to see if
anyone had replied.  holly cow!

i'm not even sure i want to add anything now, given the subliminal
heat i felt in some of the replies, but i don't learn, so here goes...

i've been with digital for 11 years.  more times than i like, i've 
heard that 'we are not a marketing company'.  some people wear that
like a badge of honor, that it's goodness to not tell the world about
our products, etc.

i feel that same attitude was represented by the people who said that
the field should 'understand the tools of the information provider'
and modify their behavior to accomodate the provider.

think about how absurd that would sound to an HP rep.  they would
laugh the provider out of their company.  pure marketing suggests
that ONE person create a message for MANY so as to modify the 
receiver's thinking and behavior based upon that information.  
now, if that message is sent out in any format other than what 
the receiver whats or can read, it will be ignored.

to the guys who said, 'if they want me to do something for them, then
they'll get it in the format i choose', i say, thanks, but don't waste
your time.  you have forgotten that the extra few minutes you spend
would save the receiver that many minutes and more multiplied by the
15, 200, or 1000 sales and other field people who could use your output.
corporate productivity increases don't come from one person doing his
job faster - it comes from increases in efficiency - which could mean
what can you do to increase the productivity or effectiveness of
100 other people.

this is the attitude which causes our messages about our great products
to be ignored by the press, by the analysts, and by the buying public.
"take it my way or lump it, bucko!"  we have to listen to our customers
if we want them to buy from us.  i don't know who your customer is, but
i doubt that he's buying.

i hope this is received in the spirit that it is intended.  i want digital
to be successful, and we can only do it by responding to the need of the
people who will generate revenue for us.  anything you all can do to help 
me increase that revenue stream is greatly appreciated.  the Sales Workbench 
people are helping immensely.  i appreciate them and can't thank them enough. 
to the rest of the company who support the field, we all are eternally 
grateful.  to anyone else, thanks, but no thanks.

now, onward and upward.
jim.

I have not even seen the Sales Workbench (I would love BTW!!), but it sounds
like a fantastic idea!!  I do not want to re-live here the hours and hours
I spent as a Digital customer reformatting hardware quotes in MS word, removing
spaces and lining up tabs, etc.  Trying to get them included in my documents
on time before meetings, etc.  (never had to do this with Compaq quotes, they
were handed to me on floppy, ready to go)

To me this debate's central issue is getting information that is usefull to
the people that are generating revenue directly, not to take away from other
groups like Engineering and Support, they obviously have a stake in revenue
generation as well, even if it is more indirectly than sales.  By doing this,
I believe that we are helping the customer, i.e. faster, better, easier
information to the sales staff means  faster, better, easier information to
the customer.

In the new Digital Today, Jeanne Allis relates a story about how she was able
to use her Hi-note to access information that was crucial to close a sale, and
she did this in front of the customer...instead of saying, "I'll get back to
you", she accessed the information in real time...and probably impressed the
heck out of the customer.

At any rate, the business issue, in this case getting information in front of
the customer quickly and in the 'right' format, is what the base noter is
talking about.  IMO he has a valid point, and I for one am supportive of his
suggested initiative.

-Stephen

.28
>...IMO [the basenoter] has a valid point, and I for one am supportive of his
>suggested initiative.
    
    I must have missed the specifics of the initiative. The only thing I
    can think of so far to solve the problem is go back to flat ASCII text.

>the rest of the digital world needs to be made aware of the tools so they 
>can support the field with files which are useful.

>it does me no good to receive a POSTSCRIPT file from marketing or engineering.
>i can NOT read it.  i can NOT print it.  i can NOT modify/customize it.  
>i can NOT show it to a customer.

>i can show POWERPOINT presentations, and WORD documents.  i can modify them
>to personalize a presentation or letter repsonse to a customer.

    Re: .30
    
    Fine: The PDF plans outlined in .18 satisfy that requirement and
    Acrobat Reader does run on the Sales Workbench platform. PostScript
    sent to the IR should be run through Acrobat Distiller. Some documents
    aren't meant to be customized; write a cover letter instead. 

    I'd like to see a couple of Distiller sites within Digital.  If you're
    on the road with a PC and find a PostScript document that you would
    like to access, copy it to the the closest distiller site, and come back
    later to get the results (hopefully it was successful in the
    conversion, NOT all are.)

    Nothing limits our Organization from immediate access to any
    information available within Digital - PPT, DOC, TXT, PS, etc.  I run
    Distiller on my PC and when we're training Business Partners, over 2000
    per quarter, I ALWAYS have the information need even if the source is
    PostScript.

    Also, we're gotten all the PostScript documents relevant to our
    Business Partners, Distilled them, and we are distribution this
    information on a CD-ROM this quarter.
    
    Alot of the Business Partners are already using this.  And if this is
    where 70 percent of our sales are going to come from then we should
    provide it in the method that they're accustomed to.  
    
    A final push on PDF is that I now can PRINT it to the printer of my
    choice and in most cases it NOT a postscript it's an HP-PCL printer.  I
    don't know what the print capability of GhostView. 
    
    Moreover, if you're using a Acrobat Exchange I believe that you can
    place annotation within the PDF documents.  If you want to highlight
    information for your customer you can.
    
    Personally, I can't do without it anymore.
    
    	

Still pushing back on the user, IMO.  Don't think it's too much to ask
for the originator to create a .ppt or whatever...

Products like ConnectSoft's X-connection for Windows NT and 32 bit MS Office
(http://www.connectsoft.com/products/xwin.html) will change the way non-PC
users feel about providing documentation in a desired format from the get-go...
...things are changing...

-Stephen

Jill missed one of my main points.

It's not that I am unwilling to "spend a few extra minutes" to make
my documents accessable to potential readers.  I don't write stuff
just to amuse myself, I write it so that people will READ it.

The problem is that you CANNOT assume that EVERYONE has the tools
required to "spend a few extra minutes" putting everything in the
known universe in PDF format.

NOT EVERYONE HAS ACCESS TO A PC.

So, what I propose as a HELPFUL solution is this:

If there is a central repository providing content to Sales Workbench,
such as IR, the maintainers should provide the ability to run Distiller
(or whatever) on the content given to them so that the maximum number of
users can access all information.

Is this a reasonable compromise?  It doesn't require that end-users replicate
the conversion efforts, and it doesn't require that I make use of non-existant
tools.

Kevin

NOT EVERYONE HAS ACCESS TO A PC.

    *
    * Well I don't know where you are but every DEC office in the states
    * that we train the Business Partners (34 last quarter) have ALL gotten
    * rid of their VAX or DEC workstations and have moved to PCs.  Every
    * secretary in DEC, I believe has a PC.
    * About 99.999% of Digital's Business Partner's have Windows-based
    * PC.  The remaining 00.001% have Mac's.  I know very few Business 
    * Partner's that we a VAX or DEC workstation and NONE use Alphas.
    *
                                          

Lots of secretaries don't have PCs.  Lots of other people don't have PCs.
People don't all have all the equipment they ought to have or need to have,
for a thousand different reasons.  (Hint: my site has a policy of one
system per desktop.  I'm responsible for UNIX.  Care to guess what's on my
desktop?)

Don't blame the victim.  Not everyone has access to a PC.

___Pete

P.S. Not everyone in the world is in the US, either.

    The UK ABU is implementing SWB this quarter so I haven't seen the
    product in the flesh yet, but if it take 20MB of memory to run, it must
    be pretty chunky!
    
    However, many of the notes in this string are symptomatic of Digital's
    history of being an engineering company rather than a sales company.
    Out there it is a Microsoft world by and large. All of our customers
    use PCs, particularly the business focused ones, and even those using
    Unix are usually insulated from the OS.
    
    Sales people are simple folk, usually not interested in the detail of
    converting this file to that file or using this or that emulator. They
    have other priorities, like selling stuff and talking to customers. I
    have been using a laptop for about 2 years now, and still cannot
    *easily* move files between it and All-In-1, which is the standard
    outside the US (I am still amazed at the number of people who
    communicate via VMS mail from US locations). I have to rename files,
    move them onto different disks, etc etc - Hey I've got better things to
    do.
    
    Pretty much everyone in the UK (you know us - that bit of Digital that
    contributes around 10% of the revenue and gets to be reorganised first
    each time :-) ) who is remotely customer facing either has a PC or has
    one within a few feet of their desk. Some of them can even use them
    without help too!
    
    Word, Excel & Powerpoint should be the default for all commonly
    available material. If nothing else - Postscript stuff completelt clogs
    up people's disk quota's.
    
    Paul Pateman
    Manager, TurboLaser Sales Team, UK ABU
    

>    I'd like to see a couple of Distiller sites within Digital.  If you're
>    on the road with a PC and find a PostScript document that you would
>    like to access, copy it to the the closest distiller site, and come back
>    later to get the results (hopefully it was successful in the
>    conversion, NOT all are.)
 
    Distiller Sites? Acrobat Distiller costs (I believe) around $200
    I have it on my notebook. It takes around 1 minute (on my 20Mhz
    486) to convert a 1MB postscript to PDF. All you do is load the file
    into Distiller and it converts you don't need to do anything else.
    
    re roelof   	

    >> and still cannot
    >>    *easily* move files between it and All-In-1
    
    
    Paul,
    
    Teamlinks really helps with this. I  use it all the time, and people
    have done customization to allow auto-uuencoding of files, so you can
    mail binaries/MS files etc outside of Digital to customers etc.
    
    Greg

    Aha - Teamlinks! Great - but HHL IS won't implement it!
    
    Paul

    Paul,
    
    It'll probably work fine,although IS don't implement it. We run it in
    Leeds, and I don't think IS fully support it.
    
    In fact, don't the HHL PCBU use Teamlinks?
    
    Greg

> Lots of secretaries don't have PCs.  Lots of other people don't have PCs.

  Given the realities of the marketplace today, this is a situation
  that can only be regarded as stupid. Or suicidal.


> Hint: my site has a policy of one system per desktop.

  What a foolish policy!

                                   Atlant

>> Hint: my site has a policy of one system per desktop.

	Wow... Glad mine doesn't. I have 5 systems in my office at 
	any one time. (VAX, Alpha, Intel, Mac...) I'd need 5 offices
	with that policy!

						mike

>>> Hint: my site has a policy of one system per desktop.
> 

I keep my machines on the floor...

> Lots of secretaries don't have PCs.  Lots of other people don't have PCs.

As long as this is true (and this will be the case for quite some time,
especially in the software development area), replacing PostScript with PDF is
plain stupid. It improves the situation for some folks at the cost of others.

Based on this string, lots of information is already there in PostScript format
and is being converted to PDF with the Acrobat distiller. If not, PDF can be
converted to PostScript.

I fail to understand why we can't offer the information in *both* formats in IR
and on the Web (this is true in several cases, but by far not in all).
Regardless of how you look at it, it certainly makes sense to have *one* person
do the conversion *once* instead of possibly hundreds or thousands doing it n
times, using each persons time and computing resources.

Strolling around to find a PC in the office that's not used for a couple of
minutes isn't a solution. Getting information is part of many of our jobs and
should not / can't be deferred to off hours, when the secretary or a colleague
already has left the office. So please offer the formats that can be be viewed
with the equipment we need to do our job, and don't require us to get new
hardware and/or external software licenses *unless* we need them for the rest of
our job as well.

Hans.

PS: a few people have requested that we go back to plain text. This is an
alternative for probably a few percent of all documents. It's *much much much*
easier to read or find specific parts in typographically formatted text
(different fonts, font sizes, maybe even color), and I haven't even mentioned
yet that 'a picture tells you more than 1000 words'.

>>PS: a few people have requested that we go back to plain text. This is an
>>alternative for probably a few percent of all documents. It's *much much much*
>>easier to read or find specific parts in typographically formatted text
>>(different fonts, font sizes, maybe even color), and I haven't even mentioned
>>yet that 'a picture tells you more than 1000 words'.

While you do have a point about reaability, visual searches, and pictures,
"It's *much much much* easier" to do machine searches on plain text.

    The WORLD's STANDARD is Microsoft Office...
    
    Pick your poison:
    			.DOC
                        .PPT
                        .XLS
                        .MPP
                        .MDB
    _or_
    			.PS
    			.TXT

    AND you can text-search a good many of those MS formats using File
    Finder in Microsoft Office. In no way does it compare to the power of a
    pure-text-retrieval tool like the amazing COMET, but times change...
    (and COMET's V3 UI is one of my least favourite of all time).

             <<< Note 4003.37 by YUPPY::PATEMAN "Cuore Sportivo" >>>
                   -< Lets get real people - Gates *is* God >-
    
>                   who is remotely customer facing either has a PC or has
>   one within a few feet of their desk.                               
    
    
    
    Paul,
    
    You must be sitting in a different bit of HHL than i was in this week.
    There were six desks in one pig-pen all with VT200's and VT420's but
    not a PC in sight and these are VERY definately customer facing people!
    
    Gerald
    

    The ABU certainly has PCs. Many sales people have old laptops, and
    pretty much every secretary has a PC. The VT is still standard on desks
    as we haven't really shed All-in-1 yet, and Teamlinks is not widely
    available in HHL. I use a VT for mail in the office, a PC for
    spreadsheets, proposals & presentations, and am typing this from the
    laptop at home.
    
    Hopefully, SWB will allow all of this to be integrated so I can use AI1
    to move documents that aren't VMS based between me and the other people
    in the world.
    
    Paul