geo@watdcsu.UUCP (Geo Swan) (04/06/84)
I have heard vague mentions concerning 'scribe', a sophisticated typesetting programme available on UNIX. I haven't seen anything authoritative though. Is anyone out there willing to post a comparison with troff, or TeX? Does anyone know where it is available from, and for how much?
stevev@tekchips.UUCP (Steve Vegdahl) (04/10/84)
Scribe is a document compiler that was developed by Brian Reid (now at Stanford) when he was a CS grad student at Carnegie-Mellon. Last I knew, it was being marketed by UniLogic a Pittsburgh company founded by Mike Shamos, a former CMU professor. It is available on TOPS-10, TOPS-20, Unix, and possibly other OS's. Its document production philosophy is much different than that of Tek or troff. Rather then having a large number of commands, each of which performs a "micro" task, it is primarly declarative, with nested scoping, as in @make(thesis) (this document is a thesis) @enter(itemize) a the paragraphs in this scope are itemized lists entries, each indented and preceded by a bullet @leave(itemize) Scribe gives the user less control of how he wants his document to appear. With TeX or troff, you can write a rat's nest of commands to make the document look almost any way you want it. Scribe is meant to be used by non-computer people as well as computer types. It was also designed to be device-independent. The same source code can be used when the output is a daisy-wheel printer as a laser printer (or even line-printer). There is a reasonable range of document types that Scribe knows about in its database (which you may extend once you become a wizard). Advantages: Usable by people of less computer sophistication. Very few (if any) cryptic commands. Has extensive bibliography, cross-referencing and indexing, all of which are relatively easy to use. The same source document can generally be compiled for multiple output devices (with some exceptions, of course; can't put italics in line-printer output, so it probably will underline instead. Has an extensible database of document types and devices. Disadvantages: Output does not generally does not look as nice at TeX. Some effects are just not possible in Scribe that one could get in Tex or troff. Facilities for tables and mathematics (ala TBL/EQN) are very weak. There are a few bugs that should be easy to fix, that Unilogic has been VERY SLOW in responding to. An example is that in citing references, certain styles add a "significant space" before the reference, which can make line-justification look strange. Last I heard, its price was $25,000. For more information, check out Brian Reid's thesis from CMU, titled something on the order of "A Document Production Language and its Compiler". Also, you might look into the work of prof. Peter Hibbard at CMU, who is working on a language (MINT) that has many of Scribe's high-level features, but with (allegedly) fewer of its shortcomings. In particular, MINT runs on a personal workstation (written in portable Pascal), and allows viewing and editing of a document in it "output form", and does something on the order of retrofitting your changes back into the source code. Steve Vegdahl Tektronix, Inc.
julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (04/12/84)
() It may interest some readers to know that the ISO has a study on devising a standard document processing language. The last I heard the proposal bears some resemblance to SCRIBE, and has the same 'declarative' approach of separating information on "how to format a paragraph" (for instance) from indications of where the paragraphs are in the text. The project is called CLPT Computer Langs for Processing of Text. ISO TC97/SC5/EG CLPT-X3J6. A draft was produced dated June 1983, in six parts. The chairman of the experts group is Charles D Card at Sperry Corporation, PA. Does anyone on the net have more up to date info on this? Julian Davies
mark@umcp-cs.UUCP (04/13/84)
Pocket summary of scribe: cost to Universities: $10,000. Nice for
well defined work, very "friendly", but difficult to take over control
when you have to diddle the picas.
--
Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: mark@maryland
CSNet: mark@umcp-cs UUCP: {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!markambar@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU (Jean Marie Diaz) (08/29/86)
Keywords: The text formatter Scribe is a copyrighted program sold by Unilogic. As far as I know, there are no public domain versions available. Unilogic's address is: Unilogic, Ltd. Scribe Systems Divisions 160 North Craig St. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 -- AMBAR "Timid entrant into the Rich Rosen School of Computer Learning...."
mike@bambi.UUCP (Mike Caplinger) (08/29/86)
I was under the impression that the version of Scribe written by Brian Reid while he was at CMU was available from CMU at minimal charge. Since it was written for DEC-10/20 in Bliss-20, though, that might not do anybody any good. I hope this doesn't mangle the facts too badly. I'm sure Brian will comment if he sees this. Naturally, even if you could do something with the original, you'd miss out on the zillion man-years Unilogic has probably put into it (based on the price, I hope they have anyhow...) Mike Caplinger (mike@bellcore.com)
reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) (09/02/86)
I am the original author of Scribe. I do not have sources to it any more; I
am just a customer like everybody else.
Scribe is available from Unilogic in Pittsburgh, PA. When I finger them at
CMU I get this result:
Address:
Unilogic, Ltd.
Suite 240, Commerce Court
Four Station Square
Pittsburgh, PA 15219-1119
Phone:
(412) 281-5959
Scribe is very expensive. A Scribe binary license costs more than a Unix
source license. robert@weitek.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) (09/02/86)
Scribe is incredibly expensive. Fortunately, there are competing products
out there that cost less. One is FinalWord II by Mark of the Unicorn, which
is available for MS-DOS, CP/M, CP/M-86, and (I think) some versions of UNIX.
It costs about $200, which is more than an order of magnitude cheaper than
Scribe. I've been using FinalWord II and its predecessor for four years; I'm
very happy with it.
If the formatter isn't 100% Scribe-compatible, it's still close. I've never
used Scribe, but I've leafed through the manual and virtually every command I
saw would run fine on FinalWord II.
The editor is very Emacs-like, complete with a macro language. It supports
DMA to the video display as well as more mundane methods, so screen updates
are very fast.
Mark of the Unicorn can be reached at (617) 576 2760.
They also have a BBS at (617) 484 2594
--
Robert Plamondon
UUCP: {pyramid,turtlevax, cae780}!weitek!robert
Disclaimer: It's not my fault!