I'll add my two cents.
Yes PE has additional capability in terms of tools and output capabilities
-if you can use them or have need for them then ther is no choice. If you
have a need for large publications and many many writers printing at one
time or huge volume there is no other choice.
On the other hand if you have a severly IT/security related environment,
using PE is a pain to use. PTC wants all the stylesheets and configuration
on the server machine. You need access to that machine to make changes.
You need to restart the server at different points to get stylesheet
changes recognized. All this is not terrible if you can make those
changes, but trying to get an IT person to focus and support you in a
timely manner makes this a difficult situation at best. Then try and
trouble shoot something with PTC when they ask you to make a change or
reboot becomes difficult. We then found some issues with processing steps
that worked differently for composer than PE. Graphics are handled
diffeently where they are missing composer ignored the problem where PE
just shut down with no useful error message. I find PE to be much more
finicy/quirk in its operation. I had stylesheets that worked locally when
tested but would not work immediately in PE due to configuration and
server memory refreshing/buffering that made troubleshooting more
difficult than it needed to be.
We added PE to a working environment in which I had custom directories
setup, everyone pointed to this location and stylesheet development being
managed from their. The Editor works with the APTCUSTOM variable yet PE is
bascially only supported if you have all this on the server in some way.
You either have to move your development environment to the PE server or
use some tool like ant to keep directories consistent (and then remember
to restart/refresh PS so those changes are recognized). this then caused
issues with our IT rules - not a PTC issue but it is the reality of the
environments their product is used in.
Also, even if you have PE, a copy of Styler or Composer would be required
to do any stylesheet development.
As others have said, PE has its place and advanatages, but at the same
time it brings an overhead cost - software cost beig one of them. I
recommend keeping it simple if you can, if you can't then you need to bite
the bullet on cost and complexity - everything is a tradeoff depending
upon your requirements.
..dan
> Hi Andy--
>
> Here's my take on it: Print composer is just fine if you are a single
> person producing a single document at a time, and those documents tend not
> to be very big.
>
> Publishing Engine is meant for settings where you have multiple authors
> publishing a reasonably high volume of documents. It's a continuum: the
> more people you have publishing, and the more documents they are
> publishing, the more PE makes sense. As Gareth pointed out, you do get
> some additional capabilities with PE that aren't directly related to
> producing PDF output.
>
> Also, I'd like to temper Andy E's pessimism about PE a bit. Yes, it is a
> server-based product, so there's a bit more to setting it up than just
> running an installer. And in the past I, too, have had the frustration of
> PE being beyond the scope of my budget and having to do without it.
> However, in my judgment setting up PE is not as difficult as it might
> sound from Andy's description. PE comes with pretty decent documentation,
> and an experienced system administrator ought to be able to get a basic
> configuration up and running without too much trouble.
>
> On the other hand, PE does have the complexity to support a lot of
> configuration options as well as your own customized publication
> functions. If you want to use those features, then of course you will need
> to get some more in-depth knowledge. In that case, either training courses
> or the help of a consultant (or both) would be a good investment.
>
> --Clay
>
