Does the last sound harsh? Witness three stalwarts in the traditional front-end business -- System Integrators Inc., Atex Publishing Systems Corp. and CText Inc. All promote front-ends running on OS/2, which is an off-the-shelf operating system -- assuming you can find it on a shelf full of Windows boxes.

SII's attempt to reinvent its hoary Coyote terminal makes you appreciate how well the R&D team -- long-departed from Sacramento -- did with the first one. A software version of the Coyote, this year MTX works. It has automatically refreshing directories (a real plus) and cut-and-paste between SII and the OS/2 world.

But there's only a rumor of client software for SII's dandy Lasr archive system; some customers claim to have seen it, but the company has yet to have announced it.

Atex promoted its "capable, scalable fourth-wave editorial publishing solution," Deadline 1.0 -- a departure from the old Atex front-end in that it uses customer-specified off-the-shelf text editors, and for evolving from a system acquired from CText three years ago. (Critical pieces, such as the Communications Manager, are pure Atex.)

Deadline gives Bedford, Mass.-based Atex a migration path away from old big iron -- those many J11 sites can get a gateway into Deadline, or can simply put it in as a stand-alone.

In Ann Arbor, Mich., CText continues to refine its Dateline package. It has links to Windows programs, but a proprietary text editor and composition engine (the politically incorrect Tomahawk). Cranked up as part of a CText Advanced File Management Editorial System, Dateline blends the old (story histories, user-customizable keyboards) and the new (nine-window screens, SQL database searches, interactive spell check and thesaurus).

These three aside, Windows is the hands-down choice among suppliers developing or augmenting their front-ends.

Harris Publishing Systems Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., is transporting its NewsMaker Editorial software to Windows, with an October ship date for NewsMaker Editorial Pagination. Now in beta testing, it will incorporate all the Harris 2100 page makeup proprietary features, and use either XyWrite or Word as the text processor with Harris' H&J.

Cybergraphic Systems Inc., of Burlington, Mass., touts its more flexible user interface -- users can choose between an icon- or a header-based interface. A really good feature for wire editors is a dynamic desk list, a la SII's MTX and CText's Dateline.

Youthful suppliers seek to distinguish themselves with spiffy adaptations of what Windows affords. Notable is the slick interface Advanced Publishing Technology of Los Angeles has developed, with its nifty color-cued headfitting and macro for fitting its display to various monitor sizes.

How's $250 a seat sound? Publishing Manager, put out by Unified Publishing of Boston, is touted as a "very simplistic" foundation for a newsroom package of shrink-wrapped Windows panes.

Seeking to gain a foothold, systems integrator ESE of Bedford, Mass., showed its infant front-end, destined to join older sibling Editorial News Layout, WireBase and MakePage production programs.

Newspapers don't have to give up their big iron to leave their big-iron suppliers behind.

Atex sites can call in Advanced Technical Solutions of North Andover, Mass., for a springboard into a pool of software that has an Atex face on it but a robust stand-alone system, Osiris II, in back. (ATS broke through the hung-up-on-hook-ons barrier at NEXPO with the sale of a complete Osiris II system to the Knoxville News-Sentinel in east Tennessee. Knoxville will be getting ATS's QuikLayout for page dummying and hooks into Quark XPress for page production.)

Less ambitious is Softek USA of Dallas, which offers a low-cost Windows-based emulator of the Atex editor. The asking price of $795 a seat was attractive enough for a major Atex customer to buy several hundred copies, Softek said.

SII sites have their migratory bird, too -- CE Engineering Publishing Systems Inc. of Loomis, Calif. CE provides a dead-ringer interface into SII on either PCs or Macs.

Also in this chase is Computerease Software Inc. of Warren, R.I. -- President Carl Berg used to write Atex interfaces for the Providence Journal. For a meager $195, Computerease's Word Mover word processing and communication package makes a laptop screen look and behave like an Atex or SII terminal.

New this year is the Computerease Editing Network, a Novell-based pagination network that connects Mac and DOS machines with a series of software modules, including custom-written Quark extensions for H&J.

Few suppliers are offering pagination solutions that are wholly their own; most are opting to develop hooks into XPress. At SII, it's SII/Mac and SII/Quest, while Atex offers Press2Go and CText has developed Expressline. (Atex and SII do offer home-grown solutions -- EdPage and Integrated News Layout, respectively -- that have been around the block a few times.)

A notable exception to Windows ware is CCI Europe Inc., of Marietta, Ga., which offers a decidedly un-American interface on three platforms (PC, Mac, UNIX).

Even as pagination occupies their time now, news systems managers are beginning to examine the more global concept of the publishing system, with one database into which previously separate (or nonexistent) systems are tied.

Heading the line to gain the most from this trend are Dewar Information Systems Corp. of Westmont, Ill., with DewarView; Agile Enterprise Inc. of Nashua, N.H., with TeamBase:Special Edition, and the spectrum of solutions offered by Software Consulting Services of Nazareth, Pa.

As we said, choices abound; shoppers are advised to stroll the aisles diligently.

And long live the front-end -- however large its kingdom.