A publishing services company located in Lanham Maryland is looking
for entry level applications programmers.

That is all you would read if we posted in the Washington Post.  But
there is a lot more to the job than just writing applications.  That
is why we are posting this long winded message to the internet.

We are a publishing services company.  That means we do almost
anything related to publishing.  We specialize in database
publishing.  We take the data from our clients and create
applications to edit and maintain the data.  Then we take the data
and produce camera ready pages.

So what does all that mean to someone looking for an entry level job?
We will train you (or at least get you a manual for you to read) on a
wide variety of tools.  The databases we work with are not small.
Most of the databases are between twenty and fifty meg in size.
(Just large enough to be interesting.)  We do work with larger
databases.  Some get into hundreds of meg or even several gig of data.

We take data in what ever format our client can provide.  If all the
client has is hard-copy (not unusual) we will have it scanned and/or
keyed in.  If they have the data in FoxPro, dBase, Paradox, Access,
Btrieve, or even ISAM, we take the data and convert it.  We have
hardware to read PC and Mac disks.  We also have worked with Sun
floppies.  Lots of data is provided to us on mag-tapes (yes we have a
couple of mag-tape drives).  Data can be in ASCII or even EBCID.  We
take whatever we can get from our clients.  This means we need people
who can figure out how to work with a wide variety of data formats.

Our clients send us word processing files.  Microsoft Word, Word
Perfect (for Dos, Mac, Windows), Quark, Page Maker, Folio, Frame, and
just about every desktop publishing tool made has been used.  We need
people who can figure out how to take a set of files (from one to
twenty-thousand) and convert them into some sort of database.  We use
a wide variety of tools to do the conversion.  Everything from Lex
and Yacc, to OmniMark and TagWrite.  SED, Awk, and Perl have also
been used.  We are not tied to any one tool.  Each tool has its own
strengths and weaknesses.  We are looking for people who are not
afraid to try new tools.  This means you may have to spend hours
pouring through awful user manuals to figure out how some tool works
(or doesn't work as is often the case).  We also end up trying out a
few beta test programs.  Ever hear of Word Perfect's SGML version?
We have a copy (I can say that because we did not have to sign a
non-disclosure to get it).

Our database application tool of choice is Delphi.  We are moving all
our existing applications to Delphi.  So knowledge of Pascal is
highly desirable.  But we have a lot of existing code in FoxPro.  We
also have some stuff in C.  Lisp and Scheme may be a possibility in
the future (if you know about SGML and DSSSL you know why).

We use TeX to typeset many of our pages.  Not latex, Plain TeX.  We
write complex macros.  If you know TeX we would love to hear from
you.  We do everything from write our own DVI drivers, create our own
virtual fonts (from scratch), to writing our own macros.  If TeX
interests you, we can train you to become a TeX Wizard.  Learn how
to do running heads with alpha-omegas and continues heads (a
particularly {*word*193} combination that requires extensive knowledge of
how \mark works).

If you are interested in networks, we have one.  For its size, it is
rather complex.  It connects up to an IBM Mainframe (remotely) and to
a Wang VS (locally).  We also have a dial-in server.  Besides these
rather run-of-the-mill connections, we have a couple of home-grown
ones that you have to see to believe.  If you are interested in
getting your feet wet with network administration I am sure we can
accommodate you.

Many of our clients are starting to move their data to the web.  So
we end up generating web pages.  We have generated thousands of pages
of both HTML and PDF.

If you are interested in graphics we do everything from scan and
clean-up to draw, to writing low-level conversion programs.  We use a
variety of off-the-shelf tools like Corel Draw, PhotoShop, and
HiJack.  We also need to convert the data to proprietary formats like
ICL.  So we need to write tools to convert TIFF or GIF or whatever
files into some other format.

We also end up writing our own postscript drivers.  We have some
proprietary software that does typesetting.  This means we have to
generate postscript.  We develop tools to take our proprietary format
and generate from scratch the postscript file for the imagesetter.
This would include converting any graphics and fonts.  So if you find
changing the encoding vector in PostScript fun, we have a job for
you.

We are located in Lanham, Maryland just a mile or so off the beltway.
The working environment is casual; no need to dress up for work.  We
have flexible hours.

The position is for permanent, on-site.  That means, you must be
able to get to Lanham, Maryland each and every work day.  We have a
cafeteria benefits package and a 401K plan.

We want principles only.  No agencies please.  If you are interested
please fax your resume to 301-306-5950, ATTN:  Jeffrey McArthur.  Or
via mail to:

        ATLIS Publishing
        ATTN:  Jeffrey McArthur
        4207 Forbes Blvd.
        Lanham, MD 20706

No email resumes please (they will just get lost in among the
hundreds of other email messages I get).