[docbook-apps] RE: Hardware Question

[Steve Whitlatch <swhitlat at getnet dot net>]

> Wanted to gather general ideas regarding a good windows based PC 
> hardware configuration for doing Framemaker/Adobe on.

Since you have posted to the docbook-apps mailing list, I am interpreting this 
as a question about the hardware needed to work with DocBook in FrameMaker. 

Structured FrameMaker + DocBook XML + a bunch of SVG graphics + all FrameMaker 
book files open at the same time runs fine on my system, which is a dual 733 
PIII system with 1GB of ram. You can probably get a much more powerful system 
off of ebay for less than $500.

The only caveat I found with structured FrameMaker's performance is the number 
of PostScript fonts one has activated. I can't say with certainty what number 
is too high. It probably depends. However, I can say with certainty that on 
my system activating more than about 1000 PostScript fonts severely degrades 
performance in structured FrameMaker. Performance did not degrade when a 
similarly high number of TrueType fonts was activated; the performance 
problem did not affect unstructured FrameMaker; and FrameMaker was the only 
application on this system affected by this high number of PostScript fonts 
performance problem.

My solution was to simply deactivate most of this system's PostScript fonts.   

> Frame dosnt support dual processors or does it? 

I think that FrameMaker is not multithreaded, but my only evidence is watching 
the CPU monitors in Windows TaskManager.

> How much memory is good?

It depends on how many things you do at one time. If you limit yourself and 
work with simple graphics, an amount as low as 128MB or 256MB could suffice, 
but your system might run slowly. 512MB is probably enough for most uses, 1GB 
is better, and rarely would one need more than 1GB. It just depends on what 
you do.

> Video card choices?

An older nvidia card with as little as 32MB of RAM works just fine. For 
example, a 32MB Quadro2 MXR can probably be had off of ebay at some very 
cheap price (I would guess $25, or less, just guessing). The card is more 
than adequate for DocBook XML in FrameMaker.

FrameMaker slows a bit when scrolling by SVG graphics, but not too badly.

> Thank you for your time,

You're welcome. 

Steve Whitlatch


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