Looking for Advice re. Interleaf vs. FrameMaker

[Phil Fernandez]

I am getting ready to make a purchase decision for my engineering group
here at Metaphor for a Sun/X-based technical publishing system.  I am
looking for advice to help me choose between Interleaf and Frame.

Our primary application is the production of software engineering design
specifications (text and graphics), as well as other ancillary technical
material.  The publishing system will be used on diskful, monochrome
SparcStation1+ workstations with plenty of memory, running X11.4.

There is one key external factor benefiting Frame, which is that our
Technical Publications group uses Frame to produce our product
documentation, and some of the other engineering groups at Metaphor also
make small use of Frame.  On the other hand, a key development partner of
ours uses Interleaf, and it would be of great benefit to share machine
readable publications with them.

Can anyone share some advice on this decision?  I'm interested in all
perspectives, recommendations, and caveats.  Does anyone have experience
in a mixed FrameMaker/Interleaf environment?  Is document exchange between
the systems possible?  Reasonable?

Please send me e-mail directly; I'd be glad to post a summary to the net
if there's interest.  Also, is there by any chance a better newsgroup on
which I should have posted this message?

+---------------------------+------------------------------------------------+
| Phil Fernandez            |               philf at metaphor.com               |
| Director, System Software |       ...!{apple|decwrl}!metaphor!philf        |
|   Development             |                                                |
| Metaphor Computer Systems | "Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind |
| Mountain View, CA         |    rule the body?  I dunno..." - Morrissey     |
+---------------------------+------------------------------------------------+