[net.text] Editors and word processors for professionals

robert@weitek.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) (09/17/86)

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Most word-processing software was written for simple tasks done by
non-technical people. What programs to give your secretary has just been
beaten into the ground in this group. What about software for us?

I've used a number of editors and formatters, and I've come to some
conclusions.

SCRIBE-LIKE FORMATTERS

Scribe, originally by Brian Reid, is an embedded-command formatter. For
example, to start a subsection, you type "@subsection{Another Subsection}",
and to put something in bold you type "@B(emboldened text)". It gives you an
immense amount of flexibility over the formatting of your document,
including multiple columns, footnotes, indexes, bibliographies -- you name
it.

Scribe can support virtually any kind of printer. Many of the formatting
macros are defined like this: "put the heading in 14-point bold Helvetica if
it's available, else use the Big font in bold, else use bold, else use
overstriking, else use all caps." Thus, fancy features are used if the
target printer supports it, and alternatives are examined until the program
finds something that will work.

Scribe also uses nested environments: if you put an itemized list inside an
itemized list, it indents more and switches to a different bullet character.
Troff fails miserably at virtually any combination of nested environments.

Scribe costs a fortune, maybe two fortunes. There are various formatters
based on Scribe that cost less. Two are FinalWord and LaTeX.

FINALWORD II, from Mark of the Unicorn[1], has a formatter that is very
close to Scribe (by the way, I've never used Scribe, but I've looked through
the manuals, and the two are very close). It's available for MS-DOS, CP/M,
and maybe even UNIX (they keep promising). List is $299, but it can be found
at prices approaching $200.

The formatter supports macros, user-defined printers, multiple columns (any
number), multiple indexes, floating figures, and so on. It has drivers for
everything from line printers to phototypesetters. It has drivers for most
laser printers, including Apple and HP.

The editor is very similar to emacs, with a macro language, assignable keys,
user-definable terminals/displays, a spelling checker, user-definable (and
disable-able) pop-up menus, etc. The performance is very good, the product
seems to be bug-free, and the editor can be used quite well as a program
editor.

LATEX is a version of Donald Knuth's TeX formatter. As far as I know, the
only drivers that exist for it are pixel-oriented devices, such as laser
printers, some phototypesetters, CRTs, raster plotters, and dot-matrix
printers (the last is very slow and not really good enough for anything but
page proofs). While less wierd and bug-ridden than troff, LATEX takes some
getting used to. It supports indexes (kind of), bibliographies, tables of
contents, et at. It has two-column support, but it stinks. FinalWord does a
much better job with multiple columns. LaTeX also has a "picture mode" that
lets you do diagrams with a fairly simple x,y format that makes it easy to
do a diagram on graph paper and transfer it to the system.

LaTeX is cheap: it comes on the $75 TeX distribution tape from the
University of Washington. It compiles slowly but simply on 4.2 Vaxen and Sun
IIs, and presumably other machines as well. The MS-DOS versions are all
proprietary and cost several hundred dollars.

INTERLEAF puts out WYSIWYG software for machines with hig-resolution
displays, such as Suns. It displays a whole page of formatted text at once,
showing graphics, fonts, and type sizes as they will appear on the output
(usually a laser printer). It's powerful and easy to learn, though I don't
think it's suitable for large documents because of the lack of indexing,
cross-referencing, table of contents, and such. Very good for documents in
the 1-30 page range. We use it for data sheets and similar documents.

CONCLUSIONS: I use LaTeX at work, and FinalWord II at home. LaTeX is a pain
for short documents -- memos and such are much easier on the Interleaf --
but is invaluable for things like the heavily cross-refrenced 200-page
manual I'm working on now, with diagrams and figures and indexes and such.

For editors, I prefer something that's fast and customizable. Vi is fast but
not customizable; emacs is customizable but not fast. The FinalWord editor
is both, but there doesn't seem to be a Unix version yet. Sigh.

[1] Mark of the Unicorn, (617) 576-2760
[2] TeX distribution -- write Pierre Mackay, uw-beaver!uw-ward!MACKAY

-- 

	Robert Plamondon
	UUCP: {pyramid,turtlevax, cae780}!weitek!robert

	Disclaimer: It's not my fault!