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Interleaf Publisher 3.0.4

Rating:	Your rating: None Average: 3 (1 vote)
Category:	Word Processing & Publishing
Year released:	1987
Author:
Publisher:	Interleaf

Download interleaf_publisher_3.0.4.sit (4.95 MB)
For System 1 - 5 - System 6.x

Manual

Emulation
Guides on emulating older applications

Interleaf was the first 'workstation' DTP package to be ported to the Mac II. It's the first salvo in what could turn out to be a barrage of products (such as the forthcoming FrameMaker from Frame Technology) originally developed for Apollo, Sun, and DEC workstations. Interleaf Publisher is based on an earlier Interleaf product called TPS (Technical Publishing Software) 3.0. TPS processed its first page in 1984 and was used primarily by large corporations and government departments in the heady environment of mainframes and workstations. In keeping with this background, Interleaf Publisher for the Mac is a program of bureaucratic proportions.

The above quote is from the May 1988 APC Review of Interleaf Publisher, shortly before its release.

To the read review in full, a scanned PDF of this is currently occupying the "Manual" download link above. This is subject to change should an actual Interleaf manual surface.

Compatibility
Architecture: 68k

This application specifically states that it will only run on a Macintosh II with a 68020 processor. Interleaf Publisher 3.0.4 was released in November 1987--before there were any 68030 Macs, and before the 68020 LC was available.

This application requires 2-bit color. Emulation in a Mac II version of vMac was very spastic, most likely because of Interleaf's decision to implement their own window and mouse managers within the application's client area.

The installation guide explicitly states you must be running System 4.1 or better. At the time of this package's release, System 4.2 had just been released.

Comments

by Kitchen2010 - 2013, August 18 - 8:06am

Thanks, MikeTomTom, for the APC review.
Very well done this scan and a nice reading !

by MikeTomTom - 2013, August 18 - 2:01am

@Kitchen2010: Yes, no problems on the scan, its a good read even today. Will take me a few days to get around to but it should be up sometime during the coming week.

[Edit] Done. I've left the period ads in place and OCR'd the text content for easy scraping/quoting, if needed.

by Kitchen2010 - 2013, August 10 - 2:58pm

The used desktop replacement shell of this application seems to be a (partial) port of the ViewPoint Shell of the Xerox Star workstation to the Macintosh II.

I found an article announcing the version v2 and this old Interleaf-FAQ saying the last version was v3.6 before the Macintosh version was abandoned.

EDIT: I repost also the post of MikeTomTom in the Request-Thread:

Curiously, I was reading about this software only yesterday, in an ancient "Australian Personal Computer" magazine (Macintosh Supplement) of May 1988.

It was an in-depth review of the yet to be released Interleaf Publisher version 3.0. The price of this software was yet to be determined, but it was expected to retail for a little under AUS$6000 (yep, 3 zeros after the 6 there). Which at that price, I don't think this software was ever intended for the mainstream mom & pop market, and likely the reason for its rarity.

An interesting software with its own desktop replacing the Mac's entirely. It's UI looking more like it came directly from Xerox Parc than Apple with multiple icons and pop-up hierarchical menus. To quote the article:

Interleaf Publisher is based on an earlier Interleaf product called TPS (Technical Publishing Software) 3.0. TPS published its first page in 1984 and was used primarily by large corporations and government departments in the heady environment of mainframes and workstations. In keeping with with this background, Interleaf Publisher for the Mac is a program of bureaucratic proportions.
The review itself was undertaken using a pre-release Interleaf Publisher 3.0 on a Mac II with 8MB RAM and a 49MB hard drive running under the latest (at the time) System 4.2 with Finder 6.0

I'd be interested in seeing a copy of this software archived here too, but owing to the rarity of this, I'd also be (pleasantly) surprised if a copy will surface.

EDIT 2: MikeTomTom, if possible for you, can you supply a scan of the mentioned magazine article on this page, please ? It might be interesting to show Interleaf's capablilities.

by MikeTomTom - 2013, August 10 - 11:10am

Thanks for the German link. It seems to be a re-hash, text-wise of whats available on Wikipedia but with great pics (or the Wikipedia page is a rehash, slurped from this German site (without the great pics)). Here's an English (Bing) translation of the German web page.

This to me really looks like its running under Xerox SmallTalk and on the the Mac OS its loaded running as a shell or desktop replacement. Very interesting and very complicated, let alone getting it to behave nicely with a limited Mac OS hardware set and SSW.

by Kitchen2010 - 2013, August 10 - 9:59am

Many thanks to all the people who made this historical piece of software coming up to Macintosh Garden !

It seems a very hard to emulate program as it bypasses most of the Macintosh System software and uses the hardware on its own.
Might be a good software for testing compatibility of Mac emulators.
Maybe the Macintosh II emulator inside MESS might be able to run this completely.
(here some setup information for MESS)

EDIT:
I have found here a German website with screenshots from the VMS version of Interleaf 5, it seems to have the same user interface on all platforms.

by grawlix.computing - 2013, August 10 - 4:58am

Presumably this application did lots of other things well. The decision to recreate a Finder in the interface just seems dopey. If you attempt to open an Interleaf document, it runs the application but makes no attempt to the display document itself. It's like the developers worked at avoiding the system toolkit.

Interleaf Publisher's ancestry, I guess, was from Interleaf's TPS (Technical Publishing Software), which was inspired by the Xerox Star and Apple Lisa just a few years before. Oddly, though their interface looks worse than either of those early attempts. I wonder how long it took to get Publisher 4 out, and what it looked like?

by macjames - 2013, August 10 - 4:52am

OK it seems to "almost" run on my MacIIsi, however i get the message: "Interleaf Publisher™ does not support this keyboard. You can only use the Apple Standard Keyboard or the Apple Extended Keyboard with this software", and the Quit button. I only own Standard and Extended Keyboard II keyboards

by MikeTomTom - 2013, August 10 - 4:16am

most likely because of Interleaf's decision to implement their own window and mouse managers within the application's client area.

You've "hit the nail on the head" here and unfortunately I don't think there is anything you can do about it. The Mini vMac II's emulator does not handle this one very well. You might need to use actual Mac II hardware if you really want to have this running smoothly - Got to say this is the most un-Mac-like UI I've come across in some time. Its almost as though its loading some run-time version of SmallTalk or GEM as a complete Desktop replacement.

Interesting historic upload tho' and its good to have such a well preserved copy in Disk Copy 4.2 images too. Thanks very much, g.c, for archiving it.

by macjames - 2013, August 9 - 11:00pm

I wonder if Wish I Were would trick the program...