siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (siegman) (08/07/90)
[I've just discovered this newsgroup (comp.text) and read the 33
articles currently available on my machine, and I gather the following
inquiry may be somewhat unsophisticated; but perhaps you can give me
some assistance in any case.]
I'm involved in a planning effort exploring computerized
manuscript preparation/typesetting packages for technical manuscripts
for professional journals, professional societies, book manuscripts,
and so on.
I suppose the basic objective is for individual authors and their
local secretarial help to be able to prepare manuscripts on a variety
of smaller personal computers (e.g., Macs or IBM PCs), print
reasonable-quality draft output, then be able to transmit the source
files to a professional journal or commercial publisher, by email or
magnetic media, for further modification and publication _without_
major rekeying or proof-reading of the final version.
We want to do this _now_ (i.e., within a year or so, not waiting
for some promised future products); with reasonable cost, widely
available hardware and software (specifically, _personal_ computer
hardware for the authors); widespread compatibility (now!) for the
underlying language; and a reasonable learning curve for the whole
process.
Or, and of course, extensive _math_ (equation) capabilities.
We've been told the prime candidates are TeX and SGML. I know
(and love) TeX from extensive use, earlier on mainframes, currently
with "Textures" on the Mac. I fail to see how anything could be much
better, in fact, at least for the purposes outline above. But, it's
also been claimed that SGML is much more widely used "commercially" or
in "commercial publishing" than is TeX.
Advice would be much welcomed from anyone familiar with the
relative status of TeX and SMGL for "commercial" or "professional"
publishing, especially of scholarly or technical manuscripts. In
particular:
1) References to journals or publishers that currently accept
author-prepared manuscripts on-line, or via magnetic media, in TeX or
in SGML.
2) Any available versions of SGML that will run (i.e., produce typeset
output and/or on-screen previewing) on the Mac, or IBM PCs?
3) Anyone with experience and comments on producing _math_ (typeset
equations) with SGML? Does it have anywhere near the capabilities and
ease of use of TeX?
I guess my preference shows through even in the questions above, but
I'd appreciate information on both systems.
--siegman@sierra.stanford.edu (Internet)
--RW.AAP@STANFORD (Bitnet)