Request: "Interleaf Publisher" for Mac

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2012, August 9 - 5:42pm

Kitchen2010

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Joined: 2012 Aug 9

Request: "Interleaf Publisher" for Mac

Hi,

I am in search for a copy of the program "Interleaf Publisher".
It was, with its competitor "FrameMaker", one of the first commerical WYSIWYG document processors for structured documents like technical documentation and programmable in the lisp programming language.

I know there was at least a version created for the debut of the Macintosh II.
There is very little information about it on the internet.
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.

I think it would be a nice addition to the Macintosh Garden, its rareness considered.

Thanks in advance.

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2012, August 10 - 1:03am

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

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.

2012, August 11 - 12:07am

Mulder

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Joined: 2012 Jan 29

The current owner of the Interleaf intellectual property claims they don't have Interleaf Publisher. But I tend to doubt that, since they bought their assets and that would have included Interleaf Publisher. I'm working on getting someone in 'Management' to actually check their basement for copies of it.

2012, August 11 - 8:12am

themacmeister

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Joined: 2009 Oct 26

I would believe that at $6000, this software will be copy-protected with a HASP ADB key or similar.

The US version may be different. I know that even Quark XPress 3.x was hardware copy-protected in Australia, as was Aldus/Adobe Presswise and ScenicSoft Preps. We usually just used the US versions, as the US buyers wouldn't put up with hardware keys, and voted with their feet. It was the same with AutoCad too.

EDIT: This looks interesting - http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-15326500.html

2013, August 10 - 2:48pm

Kitchen2010

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Joined: 2012 Aug 9

Just in case that somebody looks into this thread, you can find now Mac Interleaf Publisher 3.0.4 here.