C70:editor-people (06/15/82)
>From Mishkin@YALE Tue Jun 15 02:32:07 1982
I recently had the experience of helping someone (my father) with no
knowledge of wordprocessing look at and evaluate wordprocessing systems
for a small/moderate size law office. I saw a Wang and an IBM product.
What struck me is how crotchety they looked, what with (gasp!) "modes",
random embedded hieroglyphic symbols (end-of-line, tabs) and as-you-go
page breaks (which conveniently you can make an automatic post-pass
to get to in reasonable places). Are they all really this bad? None
of the company representatives seemed to understand the concept of
"document compiler" (e.g. Scribe, Runoff) and raw text and finished
output. Is this fairly pitiful "what you see is what you get" style
really all there is? Are we-all using editors that poor secretaries
could never use (don't tell me about how your department secretaries
use zippy editor X because; they also have zippy hacker Y always near
by)? Do these commercial systems have advantages I just didn't
recognize?
-------C70:editor-people (06/19/82)
>From Frankston.SoftArts@MIT-MULTICS Sat Jun 19 05:09:46 1982
Remailed-date: 19 Jun 1982 0001-PDT
Remailed-from: J.Q. Johnson <Admin.JQJ at SU-SCORE>
Remailed-to: Editor People: ;
THe thing to realize about commericial word processors is that
they assume that the operator is trained on them and works full
time using them.C70:editor-people (06/20/82)
>From POURNE@MIT-MC Sun Jun 20 00:25:39 1982
From: Nathaniel Mishkin <Mishkin at YALE>
Subject: Commercial Wordprocessors
Do these commercial systems have advantages I just didn't recognize?
They do not have many advantages you didn't notice; but what
you saw was NOT the best class of small system editors available.
The best small system editors store text as a stream and
format it as you desire; they will show you "what you get" on the
screen first if you ask for it, but you certainly need not print only
what you will have.
Do understand that most small systems have fairly limited
printers; only a few can do true proportional spacing, although most
will do about 48 motions to the inch. This tends to limit the
fanciness of the printout.
Date: 15 June 1982 23:25 edt
From: Frankston.SoftArts at MIT-MULTICS
THe thing to realize about commericial word processors is that
they assume that the operator is trained on them and works full
time using them.
I guess I do not understand what a "commercial word processor" is.
I know that my Congressional friends got a Lexisoft system, which they DO
NOT assume will be used full time; indeed the thing is shared among many
staffers. It was originally intended that the secretariy use it exclusively
until the staff officers discovered how much easier it was to write papers
on it than on typers. I am no great fan of the lexisoft software compared
to some others such as WRITE, but it does seem popular with them.
Is "word processor" to be taken as "dedicated word processor" ie a
crippled computer that doesn't know it can do anything else?