A scientist’s DTP: Publicon 1.0 for Mac OS X
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by: Erik Vlietinck - Last Updated: Fri 03 September 2004
If you have ever had to enter mathematical data in a document, your choice of application to do so was limited to complicated editors that work with LaTEX, Framemaker, or Microsoft Word. Framemaker is certainly up to the job, but except for its limits in the area of which formulas you can enter, it is simply not available on Mac OS X. Unix, Linux, and Windows are all served, but Mac OS X isn’t. For most scientific users that is not a problem, but for a book designer it is. Furthermore, Framemaker’s support for symbols is somewhat limited. Word is even worse. It is clearly not designed to be used as a scientific editing tool. Formula and symbols support is thin, and there’s no way to put your design really ‘right’. Enter Wolfram Research’s Publicon. Publicon uses Mathematica’s presentation power to support every aspect of the scientific publishing process.
Some of the key features of Publicon are support for easy mathematical typesetting for equations and formulas, custom fonts for special characters and symbols, palette-based interface, stylesheets, automatic numbering of headings, chapters, equations, graphics, etc. Furthermore, Publicon supports the creation of a library and end notes or citations, and conversion of documents into LaTEX, HTML, XML, and MathML, and of course the hyperlinking between documents for web-usage.
It is no surprise that Publicon is every way as powerful as Mathematica when it comes to the support the program offers for functions, formulas, equations, and other mathematical and scientific notations. Mathematica as well has some pretyy powerful publishing features up its sleeve, but Publicon is really aimed at publishing, while Mathematica is not. The main difference between Mathematica and Publicon is you can calculate with the former, while you can’t with the latter. Another difference is that Publicon is somewhat easier to understand, although only by an inch.
When opening Publicon the first time, the user is greeted by an assistant which has a feature tour readily set up for you to read. The tour is a short overview of Publicon’s features, palettes and capabilities. Some attention is given to how to perform specific tasks as well. Once the tour has finished, you’re on your own, except for the help function of course. The help function does contain a complete manual. Still, I would have preferred a paper manual as a reference, simply because the program offers so many different options, that a reference is absolutely no luxury.
Entering formulas with Publicon is easy enough. It is a matter of clicking the appropriate icons in the palettes and filling in the blanks. The formulas are not evaluated or calculated. If you want to have that functionality, you’d better buy Mathematica. Formulas that need to be entered in an evaluated or calculated form, can be pasted right from within Mathematica. The formulas you enter in Publicon, on the other hand, can also be pasted in Mathematica and calculated there.
The most impressive feature in my opinion is the support an author gets for entering his own details, end notes and citations. All these “extras” are added to a document using dialogue windows which have options or tabs with further settings themselves. Writing a scientific paper and laying out the paper so it complies with specific standards is easy to do this way. In fact, Publicon comes standard with a few templates that comply with for example BioMed article layouts.
Once the document has been satisfactorily set up, the Publicon format---which is a type of XML in its own right---can be exported to LaTEX, HTML, MathML, or a number of XML dialects. MathML is a web-based notation standard that has been approved by the W3C but which isn’t supported by all browsers yet. Safari, for example, doesn’t support MathML. However, Publicon is so good at converting into the other formats, you may never really need MathML anyway.
Publicon is not everyone’s editor, but to scientific publishers, I expect it to become an industry standard. Its power and feature-richness far exceed that of Framemaker’s in the area of formulas and mathematical and other symbologies. Its integration with Mathematica make it a logical choice for those people who already use Mathematica as their calculation powerhouse. And the cross-publishing features make it an easy choice for anyone having to publish simultaneously to paper, the web, and the screen during presentations.
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Readers' Views
FrameMaker’s indeed dead on the Mac, and there’s no replacement for it around. Unofrtunately, that’s still the situation with Publicon entering the field. First of all, Publicon 1.0 can neither import FrameMaker files (neither .fm nor .mif formats) nor export to a format that allows further editing with FrameMaker.
Secondly, Publicon is fine if you can leave proper layouting to a publisher and you happen to be writing for one of the currently 5 (in words: five) journals that are supported natively. If on the other hand you want to produce clean PDF versions of your scientific (or whatever) reports, then you’re out of luck. And Publicon, at least with its current feature set, is certainly no replacement for FrameMaker when it comes to combining several documents to a book.
I’m glad that Wolfram is having a go at Adobe, but currently the niche they’re filling seems a very small one. Maybe if enough FM users let Wolfram know what’s on their wish-list Publicon 2.0 will indeed be a FM killer, but currently it ain’t.
Andreas
By Andreas on 2004 09 05
Publicon’s feature emphasis is most certainly on typesetting technical content for journal publication, and indeed not on page layout print production ala FrameMaker or Quark. The concept is to allow the user to focus on content creation, with all the necessary metadata in conversion to other formats to allow formatting as the publisher sees fit. This includes XML formats (including a comprehensive native specification) which could conceivably be exploited by FrameMaker or Quark with the right transformation coding, though certainly a non-trivial exercise.
The journal formats included in the product are samples of what can be done, and the product is open to customization, so that other journal formats can be supported both within the Publicon interface and in export to LaTeX and XHTML. Custom XML formats are configured on a consulting basis, but Publicon’s native XML format remains transparent. Conversion to PDF works no differently than for other apps, using PDF print drivers that may be available to the user. But of course the printed results produced by Publicon are consistent with its vertical scrolling paradigm, similar to web browsers.
Book production features including a project handling interface, indexing, and TOC tools are planned for future releases.
Andre Kuzniarek
Document Technology Manager
Wolfram Research
By Andre Kuzniarek on 2004 09 15
Hi Andre
Thanks for your reply. Just let me clarify one point: That PDF files can be produced using the native print interface of OSX was clear to me. But if the typesetting you need isnīt offered by Publicon natively, e.g. if you want footnotes instead of endnotes, you need to convert the layout before printing. Either you have to develop the necessary formats yourself (not exactly an average user task) or you have to rely on a publisher or another specialist that will do the reformatting for you, providing you deliver the document in an appropriate way. That certainly doesnīt mirror the FrameMakerīs options (in which you can e.g. decide whether you want to have footnotes or endnotes).
Adobe just ran a survey among FM users asking about their needs and one thing they wanted feedback on was support of Linux and Mac OSX. So maybe the arrival of Publicon (and previous feedback to Adobe from discontent FM users) has had an effect. All the better for us users…
Andreas
By Andreas on 2004 09 16
We are definitely committed to releasing a Linux version of Publicon, hopefully before year’s end. It’s expected to be part of our 1.1 release.
Andre Kuzniarek
Document Technology Manager
Wolfram Research
By Andre Kuzniarek on 2004 09 16
From this discussion it seems that Publicon is not currently a good choice for writing a dissertation or any other document where the page layout must be done by the author (which would include a lot of books). On the other hand, on Wolfram’s website, on the ‘Who is it for’ page we have:
Teachers and Students.
Use Publicon to compose tests, homework assignments, papers, theses, and dissertations in physics, mathematics, engineering, the biosciences, and other related fields.
Could someone comment and perhaps clear this up? Since there’s no downloadable demo of Publicon it’s hard to work out what it can do.
A lot of people must be hoping that we can stop muddling along with LaTeX or Word, but to satisfy the needs of most teachers and students in technical areas the program needs to give us control over page layout, because we always have to do this ourselves, except when submitting a paper to a journal.
By Nicholas Allott on 2004 10 20
Trial versions of Publicon are available on our web site, and have been since late October. While our 1.0.1 service release is imminent, our 1.1 release, which will include Linux, is still another couple months off.
Publicon does not include built-in palettes for setting up templates that might be useful for educators, like stacked homework problems, but we have had a few requests for this and we’ll be working on providing an add-on module for this, if it does not become part of 1.1. Initial prototypes are available by request.
Andre Kuzniarek
Document Technology Manager
Wolfram Research
By Andre Kuzniarek on 2005 02 18
