morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS) (05/02/91)
Hi all - again, A follow up question. What is the general concensus about the pros and cons of DTP using UNIX with NROFF/TROFF and Macs with PageMaker etc. The UNIX user I was talking about in my previous posting is utterly convinced that he can produce FAR FAR SUPPERIOR output with his trusted text formatted processing than with my Macs text WYSIWYG processing. I don't personnally agree with him but i'd be interested to learn what the general impressions from the net are. Best regards, Chris Morgan morgan@riks.nl
ech@cbnewsk.att.com (ned.horvath) (05/02/91)
From article <19852@slice.ooc.uva.nl>, by morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS): > The UNIX user I was talking about in my previous posting is utterly > convinced that he can produce FAR FAR SUPPERIOR output with his trusted > text formatted processing than with my Macs text WYSIWYG processing. > I don't personnally agree with him but i'd be interested to learn what > the general impressions from the net are. And I can call spirits from the vasty deep -- they just don't come when I call them... 98% of what I want a word processor to do, something like Word or FullWrite will do with 10% of the time, effort, and pain of doing it with troff. For the last 2%, I'll cons up the image I want with some APPROPRIATE tool (Photoshop, or SuperPaint, or Excel, or...) and pop the image into the 98% word processor. With publish/subscribe in system 7, this will become even more natural. I did my Ph.D. thesis with troff in 1974. It was great technology for 1974. I've since recycled those brain cells... -- =Ned Horvath= ehorvath@attmail.com
maxc1158@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Greg Penetrante) (05/02/91)
The UNIX user to whom you are referring must be a jaded individual indeed, and he needs some phsychiatric help. Granted, NROFF/TROFF is very powerful for complex documents. BUT, the Mac is much more intiuitive and more aesthetically pleasing documents can be produced with the Mac. The best way to diffuse his argument is to hold a one-on-one and kick the living crap outta his NROFF formatted documents... or SHOW him stuff from the Mac and challenge him to beat it.
hoepfner@heawk1.gsfc.nasa.gov (Patrick Hoepfner) (05/04/91)
morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS) writes: >What is the general concensus about the pros and cons of DTP using UNIX >with NROFF/TROFF and Macs with PageMaker etc. >The UNIX user I was talking about in my previous posting is utterly >convinced that he can produce FAR FAR SUPPERIOR output with his trusted >text formatted processing than with my Macs text WYSIWYG processing. >I don't personnally agree with him but i'd be interested to learn what >the general impressions from the net are. For those times that you need to do some technical mathematical formulas you might like to try MathType. This is a WYSIWYG formula editor. Even if you are forced to use TeX, MathType will *also* save that formula in TeX format. When those who say that TeX or troff is better, they are generally referring to the way that these formula are produced. They figure that if it is that hard to do, then it must be better that anything that is easy to use. Another trick that you can do in Word or PageMaker that troff would have a terrible time producing is some of the PostScript stuff. I helped create a simple piece of PostScript code that would print in grey letters under the text from corner to corner. The words Confidential or Top Secret or Draft are always nice. This is a couple of lines that are dropped into the header or footer of your Word document. Another page layout application that has the ability to place text to the nearest 10,000th of an em (or is it 1,000th ?) is Quark Xpress. If you want to go head to head with TeX or troff, this might be a better package. Then again there is FrameMaker which is on the Mac and is the biggest page layout product on those unix boxes. And by the way, Textures from Blue Sky Research also is selling the TeX Metafonts in PostScript Type 1 format. This means that with Adobe Type Manager you can see these fonts better on screen and you can print them is sizes that the unix machines can't! --Patrick Hoepfner hoepfner@heasfs.gsfc.nasa.gov--
kik@wjh12.harvard.edu (Ken Kreshtool) (05/06/91)
In article <19852@slice.ooc.uva.nl> morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS) writes: >Hi all - again, > >A follow up question. > >What is the general concensus about the pros and cons of DTP using UNIX >with NROFF/TROFF and Macs with PageMaker etc. > >The UNIX user I was talking about in my previous posting is utterly >convinced that he can produce FAR FAR SUPPERIOR output with his trusted >text formatted processing than with my Macs text WYSIWYG processing. >I don't personnally agree with him but i'd be interested to learn what >the general impressions from the net are. > >Best regards, > >Chris Morgan >morgan@riks.nl My two cents follow. I used to do everything on a unix box, using vi for editing and troff for formatting. Took me SIX WEEKS of full time effort, and hundreds of pages of output to check on my learning efforts, to get the hang o of troff. I spun so much paper through the laserprinter that the sysop made me a consultant (to reduce my printing bills). I even erst'ed a few imagen fonts to polish them for superior exquisiteness. My impression is that troff is as powerful as all get out, and a nightmare and a half to master. Makes unix itself look downright user-friendly. As soon as powerful-enough Macs came along (the Mac II's), I switched over to PageMaker. For my purposes it was plenty good. I promptly forget my troff and left my hundreds of painfully acquired macros behind. VERY VERY happily. Currently, PageMaker supports only 0.1 point increments. It's enough for me, but not for everyone. The super-power users use Quark Express, which is less convenient to master than PageMaker (but several orders of magnitude easier than troff!!), and supports 0.001 point increments I believe. I also believe this is about the limit of troff as well. (Note that PageMaker's 0.1 point limit is 1/720th of an inch, or about two pixels on a 1200 dpi typesetter. Quark Express does that one hundred times better, which means that your precision is usually WAY beyond the capacities of your final output gizmo.) I think anyone who has gone through the major torture of mastering troff and has hundreds of handy macros to do the things that are trivially easy on any Mac (ask your unix-meister to show you how he underlines in troff, especially when the underlined stuff breaks onto a second line) has been sufficiently "hazed" as to never want to admit that his fraternity is a stupid choice for anyone just coming into the DTP arena (pardon the jumbled metaphors). Ken Kreshtool kik@wjh12.harvard.edu