I'm starting to feel like more and more of a dinosaur these days. I've been using Frontier since version 2 came out, but my use has been exclusively in the area of prepress automation and general Macintosh automation. I've watched and followed the recent entry of Frontier into the area of HTML and web authoring and management, but my uses of Frontier seem quite mundane these days.

I have used Frontier to automate catalogue layout projects, administer 60 gigs of images, help streamline the production of an entire prepress house, and have impressed a lot of people along the way. Compared with AppleScript, Frontier offers a mature, comprehensive development environment that is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. I've written thousands of lines of Frontier code and saved companies thousands of hours of labour and millions of dollars in costs.

I have no numbers to quote, but it seems to me that the Mac is still quite prominent in the the DTP and pre-press industries. Every week I come into contact with people who are barely aware of the awsome tools that Frontier can bring to bear in a high pressure, time critical production environment.

QuarkXpress, FileMaker and Photoshop can all be made to do one's bidding with scripting. While there are many companies that have recognized this opportunity to increase quality, decrease costs and increase production capacity, these companies are still in the minority. I understand that Userland needs to carve out a niche for itself in the web arena, but for me at least, I still find Frontier an unmatched tool in the realm of publishing automation.

David