groneman@cg-atla.UUCP (Uri Groneman X7255) (07/26/88)
To my request for recommendations of word-processors suitable to
manuscripts I received 12 answers by mail. I am very grateful to every
one of the respondents - particularly those who elaborated.
The replies contained much information that may prove useful
to others. I therefore decided to post them to the net verbatim, rather
than to just summarize. Following is a concatination of their contents:
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<
I write books, and I use Microsoft Word (my publishers like it because the
formatting works well with their systems). It works well with a mouse
(although I'm so quick at the keyboard that a mouse is a nuisance). It
has automatic footnote numbering (which is not real flexible), but no
automatic bibliography. You might want to check out Nota Bene which has
tons of footnote and bibliography support but no mouse.
If you like lots of control over paragraph and character formatting, Word
and its stylesheets are unbeatable.
Bradley Dyck Kliewer
bkliewer@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
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From: ulowell!tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM!toma (Tom Almy)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Microsoft Word is the only one I know of that meets all of your criteria.
Tom Almy
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Date: Fri, 15 Jul 88 15:49:54 edt
From: Miriam Clifford <ulowell!ecsvax.uncecs.edu!dmimi>
WordPerfect, either version 4.2 or 5.0, should win hands down. The newer
version will allow automatic bibliography referencing from two documents. I
haven't figured out how to do it yet, but am sure it's there! We have indexed,
made table of contents, etc., etc., with wp 4.2. It's a pleasure.
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Uri,
You'll get a million replies, all different. Word processors are a
matter of taste, like favorite wines. I love Word Perfect. It will
do all you ask, and quickly. It is not sold with a mouse interface;
although one is truly not necessary, an add-on program, Mouse Perfect
is said to be an excellent mouse driver for Word Perfect. I use
versions 4.2 and 5.0 of Word Perfect.
Michael R. Volow 919 286 0411, page beeper #550
Dept. of Psychiatry mvolo@ecsvax.UUCP
Durham Vet Admin Medical Center
Durham, N.C. 27705
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Uri,
Microsoft Word version 4.0 is my favorite word processor. It has
everything you have described above + Outlining, Style sheets, arithmetic
abilities, and LOTS of other features. Good Luck,
Robert Diamond (201) 560-6816
AT&T Somerset ER-4C26 /\
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From: ulowell!ihnp4!ihlpa!cga66
I would recommend MS Word 4.0, as it has the features you listed,
and is very good with doing some of the more advanced things.
It also will produce an index for you, if you mark words and phrases
as you put them in.
Caution: I, and others, have had problems with 4.0 and the mouse.
MS says that 4.0 works only with their mouse. Caveat emptor.
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From: ulowell!ames!kontron!optilink!cramer (Clayton Cramer)
Microsoft Word 4.0 has all the features you want, support for a wide
variety of printers, in acceptably fast on an AT (and so-so on an XT).
It's quite reliable.
I wish I could say the same for the Mac version.
Clayton E. Cramer
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From: ulowell!clyde.ATT.COM!feg (Forrest Gehrke)
XyWrite is particularly addressed to the features you
mention. It has at least 8 windows and is popular
among writers, reporters (does snaked columns), etc.
Also handles outlining with auto indent and auto
Roman numeral sequencing.
It also handles the problems of footnotes being
on the correct page when more text is added.
(Automatically moved to the correct page).
----------------------
You should look closely at Nota Bene 3.0, a customized Xy-Write
designed for creation of large manuscripts. It offers all the
facilities you list (and much, much more, as they say on Madison
Avenue) except that (so far as I know) it doesn't use a mouse.
Very fast, extensive on-line help, excellent manual, elaborate
support for footnotes, bibliographies, indexes, outlining,
red-lining, tables of contents, etc. There's a good free-form
text-base built in, as well as a very useful and probably underexploited
programming language. There's a spelling checker, thesaurus; etc. Good
facilities for multilingual writing. You can have 9 windows open at once.
This is the word-processor endorsed by the Modern Language Association.
For more information you can write to the producer, Dragonfly Software,
285 West Broadway #600, New York 10013, or phone 212-334-0445.
James Woolley, English, Lafayette College, Easton, PA 18042
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I use PC-Write 2.71 (3.0 is coming Real Soon Now). There's a 64Kbyte
limit on how big a file you can edit, but you can chain files together
and print as big an MS as you have.
> - footnoting and bibliographic referencing capabilities;
Footnotes are fairly straightforward (done with dot commands). One
limitation: the text for a footnote goes at the end of the paragraph
with the footnote mark. If you have a footnote mark at the beginning
of a long paragraph, the footnote may end up on the next page, even
though it "should" have gone on the same page.
> - at least two windows
Two windows (into the same file, or different files; must save changes
to one file before editing another, even when just swapping windows).
> - easy search, replacement and cut-and-paste capabilities;
Very easy, very fast. Simple wildcard character support; no regular
expressions.
> - spell-checker and thesaurus access;
The built-in spelling checker is very nice (better than Turbo
Lightning) for as-you-type checking, not so nice for guessing correct
spelling. No thesaurus access. I use it with or without Turbo
Lightning.
> - mouse control of cursor;
Mouse menu provided. It's okay, but if you move the cursor too far to
the right, it spends a lot of time in horizontal scrolling.
> - ...
*Very* fast, even on 4.77 MHz systems. Works on single 360K floppy
systems with little disk swapping. Perfect for a T1000 or other single
floppy portable. Cheap ($79). Shareware: try before you buy. With a
little thought (set up the ruler files right ahead of time), you can
work entirely with pure Ascii files, even with automatic reformatting.
Some index creation help, but not as nice as more sophisticated
systems.
Consider Borland's Script, too. It's based (three generations back) on
Scribe, an innovative manuscript formatting system. Script itself is
more (but not totally) WYSIWYG than Scribe. Price: $200 list, $150
discount, $100 for Turbo Technix (Borland magazine) subscribers.
-Paul S. R. Chisholm, {ihnp4,cbosgd,allegra,rutgers}!mtune!lznv!psc
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Return-Path: <microsof!ingridt@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
I favor Microsoft Word, which has all the capabilities you listed...
course, I'm biased.I work for Microsoft....
the real swede
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I can highly recommend MS-WORD from Microsoft. It isn't cheap (in any
sense of the word :-) but it is very versatile. It has all the features
you say you require, plus one which you particularly will be pleased
with as you write manuscripts etc. This is the inclusion of style
sheets like those used by typesetters. Even the terminology is the
same: galleries, points, gutter margins etc.
I use WORD to generate manuscripts, changing the style sheet (I have
several for different usage: e.g. draft, final, comms(for sending over
a link), etc.) depending on what I wish to do with the document: e.g.
I use a draft style with double spacing etc. to check copy, whilst by
simply changing the style sheet to final I get the same document
formatted up for my laser printer.
Cheers Gareth
Gareth Howell <howellg@idec.stc.co.uk> G6KVK @ IO91vx
ICL Financial Services, London, England, Tel:+44 (0)1 638 5622
>
===========================
This has been very helpful and gives me a good basis from
which to seek what I need. Incidentally, what I meant by "manuscript"
referred primarily to thesis-type, rather than books or tech-pubs. For
this purpose, I conclude, MS-Word seems, despite its apparent popularity,
to be less suitable than some of the others mentioned.
Thanks again to all!
- Uri Gronemann (508) 658-0200 x7255Ralf.Brown@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (07/26/88)
In article <5375@cg-atla.UUCP>, groneman@cg-atla.UUCP (Uri Groneman X7255) writes: }I use PC-Write 2.71 (3.0 is coming Real Soon Now). There's a 64Kbyte Yeah, it's been RSN for the past 18 or 19 months.... First it was Spring 87, then Summer, then Fall 87, then Spring 88.... I haven't heard anything for the past six months. }Consider Borland's Script, too. Hmm, have they got a *second* word processor? :-) It's Sprint, not Script. -- UUCP: {ucbvax,harvard}!cs.cmu.edu!ralf -=-=-=- Voice: (412) 268-3053 (school) ARPA: ralf@cs.cmu.edu BIT: ralf%cs.cmu.edu@CMUCCVMA FIDO: Ralf Brown 1:129/31 Disclaimer? I |Ducharm's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough claimed something?| you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.