Am 29. Februar 2012 21:10 schrieb Kip Warner
One other thing too that I don't know if anyone has ever raised anywhere is that other typesetting applications that store their project files in some kind of proprietary or binary format will probably not be very diff friendly. A big advantage to anything TeXish is that it makes collaboration on a large document much easier because it can be typeset using plaintext documents.
At least InDesign's and Scribus' files have a XML representation and would be diffable/versionable in that format. InDesign's XML format is widely used e.g. in editorial systems; you can also save just snippets (layout parts). I'd like to add that the mentioned GUI programs all are scriptable - Scribus in Python (AFAIK), InDesign in JavaScript or AppleScript; don't know about the current state of XPress, in old versions on the Mac it supported Frontier, then AppleScript. I've some experience in remote controlling ID by Python appscript (i.e. sending AppleScript events from Python); it works, but is not very reliable, mostly due to missing/wrong documentation on Adobe's side and quirks of AppleScript. Scripting TeX is much easier; I still seldom use Lua, but write ConTeXt sources from Python scripts. Greetlings, Hraban