Word Perfect: in memorium

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

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Hi Shane,

There are "front ends" to TeX that simplify things somewhat, such
as latex and amstex. The latter is used by mathematicians, and
the American Mathematical Society (hence AMS-tex) has made it the
official tool for authors.

No doubt that WP is easier for many things, but that convenience
comes at the cost, as you point out, of keeping a Windows box
around just for that purpose. It also comes at the cost of
locking your source documents into a proprietary format that
requires others to obtain a compatible processor to work with
your files.

Chuck

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004, Shane Wegner wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 07:57:55PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> > Lots of folks seem to be missing Word Perfect 5.1 pretty badly. I was
> > going to say they seem to pine for it, but that would be too bad!!!
>
> --- snip ---
>
> One of the only remaining reasons I continue to have a
> Windows box is word processing.  You mention xml but afaik,
> xml doesn't know anything about fonts, emphasis, or even
> paragraphs.  In order to get all that, you have to write in
> a format like DocBook where you have to put everything
> inside <para tags.  That and pressing ctrl-b is a lot
> easier than writing <emphasis>my text here</emphasis>.  Oh
> and not to forget <itemisedlist> for bullets etc.
>
> I'm no xml expert but doesn't changing fonts and sizes
> involve writing stylesheets for the document in question.
> Maybe tex simplifies all this, I have never looked at it
> but imo, word processing still has its place and I haven't
> come across a good console app yet.
>
> S
>
>

- -- 
The Moon is New
In a world without Fences or Walls no one needs Windows or Gates.
My home page is now at http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh
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