chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (05/01/87)
From: Peter.Su@GNOME.CS.CMU.EDU
Throughout history, there has been a great debate going on among those who
use computers to generate documents.
On one side, we have the WSYWIGers. To them, seeing it right, on the
screen is priority number one.
On the other side, we have those who scorn "visual formatting" or "what you
see is all you get" systems, and would rather use a compiler type system
because of all the flexibility that you gain by doing so.
Well, now, this long debate has reached comp.text.desktop.
I have been thinking about this stuff for about a year, since I started
heping out a typeset a text book in LaTeX. Over the last year, I have
fought and clawed and hacked at LaTeX to get the headers to look just so,
and to align those equations in nice columns, and I am impressed by the
power of expression that the TeX and LaTeX languages give you. Without much
thought, equations flow onto the page. Chapter headings, tables of contents,
hyphened words, and indices are created with the utmost of ease. And of
course, as we all know, those line breaks that TeX generates for us are the
best they can be.
On the other hand, I have also been impressed by the sheer amount of time it
takes LaTeX to format, say five or ten pages. Here, on my big mean unloaded
Vax 11-780, I wait and wait and wait...and then "ack!" I scream as I find
that one too many tab stops shoved that column over into the margin, and the
whole process must be repearted just to fix on line of the chapter. Gaawwd.
And worse, when I later have to add corrections, or fix the few bad line
breaks that I see, *poof*, all my breaks have suddenly changed, and I have
to go back and twiddle everything into shape.
At times like this, I scream into the halls "Why can't this be WSYWIG???." I
should be able to fix this stuff right there on the screen, quick easy, no
muss no fuss. I shouldn't have to deal with these long compilation times,
or the error messages that spew out 15 levels of twisting turning
incomprehensible macro expansions (I have yet to see more any given error
message from LaTeX that was very helpful past the first 256 characters).
So, I go home to my Mac, and I start hacking on Word 3.0. And when it comes
time to collect everything together for a great index, or table of contents
formatted anyway I want, or when I have to typeset that equation that is the
answer to the greater physical questions of our time, I find myself just
lusting for all that great expressive power that I had back in the black and
evil world of the non-WSYWIG system.
Anyway, I've been bit by the bugs on both ends. But I have also noticed
that both ends are converging towards each other. We have the TeX systems
with preview, and the WSYWIG systems (like Word) with style sheets, and
simple macros, and even index generation, though it is not as flexible...
But I think what we all want is the best of both worlds. We want to be able
to build our documents in the visual way, and yet be able to store what we
have done, an duse it over and over again, the way that TeX enables us to
write macros for later use and reuse. We want to be able to build those
strangely shaped paragraphs without such magical incantations as
\parshape a b c a b c n y x...
We want multiple columns, staring us in the face, without worrying about
boxes and glue, and output routines, and which tokens will get expanded in
what order. And yet, we want to be able to do all this with all the
flexiblilty and power that the TeX language gives us...
So, one point behind all of this rambling I guess, is to try to show people
that there are tradeoffs to be dealt with in either world. If you want the
ultimate in flexibility, then you have to deal with a lot of trouble and
complications (though, as a aside, I think maybe Donald Knuth went just a
bid overboard with TeX...it can't be THAT hard :-). If you want to be able
to get text formatted easily, and quickly, then you have to be willing to
put up with what Microsoft thinks good output.
I don't think that either system is really better. I don't even think that
the application you have in mind really affects things much. There are
those who typeset their letters in TeX, and those who write books in
Macwrite, and even one guy I heard of who set about a couple a hundred Macs
all running pagemaker to do some large publishing jobs.
Well, this has run on too long. I guess I'll finish by saying that as a
student of computer science, I am going to look into computer typesetting as
a research area, and maybe I'll get to build that system that will address
some of the troubles that I've been dealing with lately.
Ah, to join the ranks of Knuth, Brian Reid, ... ;-)
Cheers,
Pete
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Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM [I don't read flames]
There is no statute of limitations on stupiditychuq@plaid.UUCP (05/08/87)
From: rochester!steinmetz!davidsen@steinmetz..arpa (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Date: 6 May 87 20:10:55 GMT
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
I recently had to make some changes in a document which came to
me in "scrip" (or 'script", it was spelled both ways). I used
the "FinalWord" package on a PC, working with downloaded
proportional fonts in an HP JaserJet+. It could format the text
to a file in < 2 minutes, including references, index, and table
of contents. Output was in six fonts, proportionally spaced.
What I'm saying is that batch formatters don't have to be slow.
This document was about 54 pages long proportional or 75 fixed
width, and I can certainly live with that speed.
I have started looking at "Manuscript", which does bold, italic,
underscore, fonts, tables and equations. I haven't used it
enough to evaluate it, and I ran it on an 80386 box so I can't
give any meaningful estimate of how fast it really is.
I use troff whenever possible...
--
bill davidsen sixhub \ ARPA: wedu@ge-crd.arpa
ihnp4!seismo!rochester!steinmetz -> crdos1!davidsen
chinet /
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"
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Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM [I don't read flames]
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity