CompuServe Messages

I have run into the same problem you did. A Federal customer approached us to produce a fairly large number of CD's to distribute information internally and to commercial users. I spent a lot of time attempting to find out about companies that work with putting textual and graphic materials onto CD — it turns out IMHO that for this kinds of applications the field is still pretty young, and while there are a growing number of options, less than you might think that have any strong track record. Regardless, the issue of retrieval engines also was a problem. The really good ones, especially those that manipulated images cost a fortune. We ended up using Folio which is good at text — I think — though not real strong with images AND most important is fairly inexpensive when used for non-profit distribution. I believe there would be a market out there for a low cost retrieval engine that was sold at a reasonable price, I expect that over the next year or two some enterprising software developers will come out with them — in particular a Windows based utility could be pretty popular. Good luck. – Dan