tj@peirce.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R Johnson) (05/31/90)
I do a lot of technical writing for scientific journals and conferences. Soon I will also begin writing my dissertation which I expect to be about 100 single spaced pages. I am trying to find out if there is anything I can use on the Mac that is easier and nearly equivalent to LaTeX. LaTeX produces excellent output, but requires a great deal of effort to do certain types of tasks like including pictures or modifying document styles. TeX previewers help, but it would still be nice to have an overall easier to use system. I've never really used a WYSIWIG WP program before I bought my mac about a month ago. Since the, I've tried macWrite II and Word 4. MacWrite II is pretty simplistic. I can't imagine using it for more than simple papers --- perhaps the kind you might write in high school or early college. Word 4 is much better, but it still falls short in many ways. In fact, MacWrite II has some features that Word is missing, like auto-hyphenate as you type. Below are features that I would like in a WP program. I would appreciate hearing how people handle these in Word, as well as, any other programs that support the features. My guess is that FrameMaker might be closer to what I need, but it isn't out yet, and is priced exorbitantly high with no word yet about whether it will be discounted for education. (I only paid $69 for Word 4.) - Automatic numbering of sections, lists, and figures. Word understands headings, but it doesn't know how to automatically renumber them. Idealiner numbers and renumbers as you add and move section headers, so I would think that it would simple to do. Also, Word doesn't seem to understand anything about figures. I hate to think of going through and numbering figures by hand. - References to other parts of the document. Things like "see section 3.2 for further information" and "as shown in figure 3 on page 24." Again, I don't want to have to do all this numbering by hand --- that's what computers are for. - Bibliographies in various formats. Word doesn't seem to know anything about references. I would like to be able to enter a database of references in a single format and have the WP suck in the ones that I need and format them according to the style that I select, including the pointer to the reference in the text. I'm looking for something similar to BibTeX. - Support for environments. For example, I would like to make an enumeration or description environment and apply it sections of text. Word's styles seem a bit too primitive to do this (but they are better than nothing). Frankly, I am amazed that it is so hard to find WP programs with these features. Such features are quite common in many documents. The Mac rags always complain about LaTeX being hard to use, but it looks to me like it might be easier to use to produce sophisticated documents. Finally, I have OzTeX, but it really doesn't fit well with the Mac environment. Because LaTeX+BibTeX require a lot of repetitions, it is much easier to drive from a command line interface with history. I also don't like the built in postscript driver. One of the nice features of TeX is it's device independence. On a multitasking system there is really no need to bundle all of this together. (I've been spoiled by AmigaTeX.) ---Todd -=- Todd R. Johnson tj@cis.ohio-state.edu Laboratory for AI Research The Ohio State University
jsimon@voodoo.ucsb.edu (05/31/90)
-Message-Text-Follows- In article <81032@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, tj@peirce.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R Johnson) writes... > > I do a lot of technical writing for scientific journals and... I do too. I use FullWrite for everything. It's far from perfect, but not as far as everything else out there. > > Below are features that I would like in a WP program. > > - Automatic numbering of sections, lists, and figures. > - References to other parts of the document. FullWrite does these very well. > - Bibliographies in various formats. FullWrite handles different formats of bibliographies, but it may not be flexible enough for you. > - Support for environments. FullWrite has user-defined styles. They're not the same as Word's stylesheets, but I'd say they're more similar than dissimilar. I'm not quite sure what it is you're looking for here. > Frankly, I am amazed that it is so hard to find WP programs >with these features. Such features are quite common in many >documents. The Mac rags always complain about LaTeX being hard to >use, but it looks to me like it might be easier to use to produce >sophisticated documents. I agree. Word processors for the Mac still have a ways to go. On the other hand, while one can do just about anything with LaTex, it's never clear how much time and effort it will take to do it. It's always been a balance of Ease Of Use versus Power. It's not clear to me that it must always be that way. I think FullWrite does bring the two a little closer. Jonathan Simon Dept. of Physics University of California Santa Barbara
jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (George J. Jefferson) (05/31/90)
From the 'want list' > - Automatic numbering of sections, lists, and figures. Word >understands headings, but it doesn't know how to automatically >renumber them. Idealiner numbers and renumbers as you add and move >section headers, so I would think that it would simple to do. Also, >Word doesn't seem to understand anything about figures. I hate to >think of going through and numbering figures by hand. > > - References to other parts of the document. Things like "see >section 3.2 for further information" and "as shown in figure 3 on page 24." >Again, I don't want to have to do all this numbering by hand --- that's what >computers are for. MSWord's biggest shortcoming in my opinion. A better-than-by-hand method of numbering equations, figures, sections, whatever involves using the 'mail merge' feature. Give each item to be numbered a unique name enclosed in the funny brackets that the merge function recognises. Example y = y (<<eq1>>) as you can see from equation <<eq1>> etc etc .. That's the easy part. Now you need to construct a list of your reference names and the corresponding numbers like this eq1,eq2,eq3,section1,section2,fig1 1.1,1.2,1.3,1,2,1 Then mail merge - and all of the proper substitutions are done. I'll assume that anybody still interested can look up how to use the mail merge as well as I could explain it. Constructing the list of references may be more or less difficult than numbering the paper by hand would have been. This may sound contrived (it is) but it is sometimes better than the old fasioned way if you have lots of references. George Jefferson jeffe@eniac.seas.upenn.edu george@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (05/31/90)
> Then mail merge - and all of the proper substitutions are done. I'll assume > that anybody still interested can look up how to use the > mail merge as well as I could explain it. Constructing the list of > references may be more or less difficult than numbering the paper ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > by hand would have been. Actually, you could probably use the automatic table-of-contents generation feature to extract your mail-merge information. Then copy the table of contents to a separate file, use a substitution or two to format it as a single comma-separated list, and enter the appropriate numbers / letters. This would automate the entire process (in a clumsy way). Tonight I just got really sick of this new shortcoming in MS-Word. So far, we have: (a) Lousy-looking equations (b) Inability to justify text containing fractional widths (c) Lack of automatic numbering of figures or references One or two more serious flaws and I'll switch to TeX, I swear. It's so stupid. MS-Word already has the basic equipment for automatic numbering (hidden text). Users should be able to type phrases like <<id1>> ^^^^^^^ in hidden text, which word would glady replace by <<id1A>> ^^^^^ ^^ which would show the label "A" on the screen, and facilitate renumbering (renumber type-1 phrases using capital alphabetics) in the future. That way, you could have an arbitrary number of labelings, and could always renumber in a different way. This would be oodles simpler than the current, complicated "line numbering" and "paragraph numbering" abortions in ms-word. Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois 1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801 ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies
jnelson@gauche.enet.dec.com (Jeff E. Nelson) (05/31/90)
> - Automatic numbering of sections, lists, and figures. > - References to other parts of the document. > - Bibliographies in various formats. > - Support for environments. The first three out of four features are found in a shareware application and Hypercard stack collectively referred to as WordRef. WordRef works in conjunction with Microsoft Word, so--because you already have Word--I expect you'll want to give WordRef a try. You'll find it available for anonymous ftp at sumex-aim.stanford.edu in the files /info-mac/app/word-ref-13-part1.hqx and /info-mac/app/word-ref-13-part2.hqx. Here's the Introduction section from the user's guide which explains its capabilities. Note: I made some slight editing changes to correct characters which don't translate well from the Macintosh character set to the ASCII character set. ------------------------------------------- WordRef User's Guide version 1.3 16 December 1989 Copyright 1989 Mark H. Nodine 1. Introduction WordRef is an application which allows users of Microsoft Word to define and refer to cross-references and to have citations and bibliographies automatically generated. This is accomplished via the Print Merge facility of Microsoft Word: the cross-references and citations are print merge variables (enclosed in << and >>) which the WordRef application scans and provides values to. WordRef is being distributed under the ShareWare system. If you find it useful, the price is $25, which should be sent to: Mark Nodine 70 Mountain Avenue Riverside, RI 02915-5016 Permission is granted to copy and distribute WordRef, provided that the complete package (application, stack, desk accessory, and document) is kept together, and that the package not be sold commercially for more than the reasonable cost for the distribution medium. Bug reports or suggestions can be mailed to the above address or sent via electronic mail to "man@cs.brown.edu". There have been at least two earlier applications released which use the Print Merge facility of Microsoft Word for similar purposes. I have opted to write my own because neither one of these (Scholar's Aid and Xref) were general enough to suit my needs. I have tried to make this application as flexible as possible so that it can accommodate virtually any bibliographic style or cross-referencing needs. Some of the features of WordRef are o No limit on the number of counters (variables) used for cross-references. o Variables can be combined in general arithmetic expressions. o Increment operators are included for convenience. o Variables can have strings interspersed with numbers. o Can scan Word files directly (if Fast Save is off). o There can be any number of Word files or bibliography files in a single manuscript. o The bibliography files are kept in the ever popular BibTEX format. o A HyperCard stack is provided for maintaining the bibliography files. o An additional field is provided for each card for free-form comments, keywords, etc. o Several different citation styles are provided to go at the point of reference. o A user-definable style sheet is used for formatting the bibliography entries. If you have used an earlier version of WordRef, you will be interested in section 7 of this document which is entitled "Release Notes". Many thanks are due to Herb Barad who developed the stack on which the WordRef stack was based and kindly gave permission to use it as my starting point. Thanks are also due to Sven Axelsson who substantially reworked the user interface of the WordRef stack during testing. ------------------------------------------- I've experimented with an earlier version of WordRef (mostly playing with the Hypercard stack to manipulate bibliography entries), and I've found that it works extremely well. I highly recommend it! -Jeff E. Nelson -Digital Equipment Corporation -Internet: jnelson@tle.enet.dec.com -Affiliation given for identification purposes only
philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (06/01/90)
In article <12080@shlump.nac.dec.com>, jnelson@gauche.enet.dec.com (Jeff E. Nelson) writes: > > > - Automatic numbering of sections, lists, and figures. > > - References to other parts of the document. > > - Bibliographies in various formats. > > - Support for environments. > > The first three out of four features are found in a shareware > application and Hypercard stack collectively referred to as WordRef. > WordRef works in conjunction with Microsoft Word, so--because you > already have Word--I expect you'll want to give WordRef a try. You'll > find it available for anonymous ftp at sumex-aim.stanford.edu in the > files /info-mac/app/word-ref-13-part1.hqx and > /info-mac/app/word-ref-13-part2.hqx. Here's the Introduction section > from the user's guide which explains its capabilities. Small correction - they're called wordref-13-part1.hqx and wordref-13-part2.hq (no hyphen between word and ref). I haven't tried this; I have tried Fullwrite, which does most of what was requred, but badly needs a major revision to fix loose ends/bugs. I'm looking forward to it (optimist - OK, but I prefer the overall concept to MS Word, and would really like to see it properly developed). Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
spector@brillig.umd.edu (Lee Spector) (06/01/90)
In article <5559@hub.ucsb.edu> jsimon@voodoo.ucsb.edu writes: > >I use FullWrite for everything. It's far from perfect, but not >as far as everything else out there. I don't get it. I've played with the FullWrite Demo a bit, and I can't figure out how it is finding such devotees. The problem: it's incomprehensibly, fantastically SLOW (on my IIcx with 8 Meg.). The other day I tried a search/replace on a document with less than 10 pages and it took something like 15 minutes!!! Granted there were alot of replace instances (I think I was replacing double spaces with single spaces) but no other word processor that I've tried is even in this ballpark for unuseability. I once created a longer document (maybe 60 pages, with some graphics included) and as I recall it was so slow that you had time to go get a cup of coffee every time you flipped a page! FullWrite's features are indeed quite nice, but I just can't figure out how anybody can put up with such sluggishness. Perhaps FullWrite devotees just produce very small documents? Perhaps they all have accelerators? Perhaps the current version (2.?) is significantly faster than my demo (1.1)? (I asked an Ashton-Tate person if speed was one of the upgrade improvements and they said no, but I think it was just a salesperson...) -Lee (spector@cs.umd.edu)
nilesinc@well.sf.ca.us (Avi Rappoport) (06/02/90)
In article <81032@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Todd R Johnson <tj@aristotle.cis.ohio-state.edu> writes: > > I do a lot of technical writing for scientific journals and >conferences. Soon I will also begin writing my dissertation which I > > - Bibliographies in various formats. Word doesn't seem to >know anything about references. I would like to be able to enter >a database of references in a single format and have the WP suck in the >ones that I need and format them according to the style that I select, >including the pointer to the reference in the text. I'm looking for >something similar to BibTeX. EndNote will let you make bibliographies in Word, WriteNow, WordPerfect and MacWrite 5.0. It does a lot of nifty formatting and renumbering and we seem to have a lot of happy customers. -- -- Help me justify my online bills: ask me EndNote questions, please! -- Avi Rappoport 2000 Hearst, Berkeley, CA 94709 nilesinc@well.sf.ca.us, 415-655-6666 Niles.Assoc on AppleLink fax: 415-649-8179
ddaniel@portia.Stanford.EDU (D. Daniel Sternbergh) (06/02/90)
In article <18296@well.sf.ca.us> nilesinc@well.sf.ca.us (Avi Rappoport) writes: > >EndNote will let you make bibliographies in Word, WriteNow, WordPerfect >and MacWrite 5.0. It does a lot of nifty formatting and renumbering and >we seem to have a lot of happy customers. > Count me as one of the "hc's". Now when EndNote supports a glossary-like list of common reference sources, so it's easier to add "yet another important paper from good ol' JAS (Journal of Arcane Science)" it will be even more invaluable. -- == Daniel == Daniel Sternbergh ddaniel@lindy.stanford.edu {decwrl|sun}!lindy.stanford.edu!ddaniel BITNET: ddaniel%lindy@stanford
stiber@cs.ucla.edu (Michael D Stiber) (06/02/90)
There is a shareware package called "WordRef", which does pretty much
what you want. It consists of a Hypercard stack, a browser DA, and an
application. The stack is used to maintain bibliographies, which can
be exported to BibTeX format, if you like. The DA allows one to scan
through a bibliography while using Word. The application does the
real work --- it scans through (possibly multiple) Word files (saved
with "Fast Save" off) and builds auxilliary files for
cross-references, citations, numbered figures, titles, tables, etc.
Then, you use the Word mail-merge command to produce the final
product. One catch is that it is compatible with Word 3.x, not 4.x.
Not too great a loss for me, since I consider Word 4 to be a dog.
I have been investigating FullWrite Professional lately. It looks
very good, and does almost everything one might want, except that its
bibliography capabilities are pathetic. Almost no flexibility in
citation format, and actual entries would have to be hand-reformatted
(not to mention that you have to manually delete or enter them in).
Also, you'd have to use Expressionist or something for equations (then
again, Word's equations are kinda ugly, anyway). I still haven't
figured out if its possible to have a table of contents, list of
figures, etc, or if everything would just go into the table of
contents. However, there have been consistent rumors about an
upgrade, and one can only hope that FullWrite will be the first
WYSIWYG program to give us everything we need...
--
Michael Stiber
stiber@cs.ucla.edu UCLA Computer Science Dept.
...{ucbvax,ihpn4}!ucla-cs!stiber Machine Perception Laboratory
3564 Boelter Hall,Los Angeles, CA 90024philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (06/03/90)
On this subject, I just discovered Word's Formula glossary (I have version 4.0a) doesn't include the symbols for "subset" and "subset or equal to". The reason, I suppose, is they are pretty hard to find: you type 2 keystrokes to get them (OPTION-n SHIFT-A and OPTION-n SHIFT-O, of course while in Symbol font). If someone in Microsoft reads this, perhaps they could correct this oversight, since most people are going to battle to find these 2 (commonly needed) symbols from the keyboard. (Who knows why they were mapped to a part of the alphabet not found by a simple keystroke...At least this isn't Microsoft's fault.) Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
cca@newton.physics.purdue.edu (Charles C. Allen) (06/04/90)
> I don't get it. I've played with the FullWrite Demo a bit, and I > can't figure out how it is finding such devotees. The problem: it's > incomprehensibly, fantastically SLOW (on my IIcx with 8 Meg.). The other > day I tried a search/replace on a document with less than 10 pages and it > took something like 15 minutes!!! I use FW 1.1 on a II (1500K MF partition) and on a IIci (1124K MF partition). On the IIci, I just took a 15 page document and replaced all double spaces with single spaces. It took 13 seconds. Charles Allen Internet: cca@newton.physics.purdue.edu Department of Physics HEPnet: purdnu::allen, fnal::cca Purdue University talknet: 317/494-9776 West Lafayette, IN 47907
spraggs@ve7apu.uucp (John Spraggs - VE7ADE) (06/05/90)
>Summary: FullWrite Demo takes 15 min vs. FullWrite takes 13 sec to make a > bunch of global changes. A possible cause is automatic repaginate. If FullWrite is anything like Word 4.0, you will notice an enormous difference. I had a 200k text file that took more than 8 hours to change about 700 CR characters to LFs. The disk was being accessed continuously and the % complete digit was taking tens of minutes to increment. The whole thing completed in less than 5 minutes with automatic repaginate off. This was with a 1 Meg Mac+ and a CMS-80 external HD. I've never used FullWrite, so I'm just guessing, but the discrepancy has to be in a mode setting or something similar. Good Luck, John
isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Ken Hancock) (06/05/90)
In article <1990Jun5.064509.28386@ve7apu.uucp> spraggs@ve7apu.UUCP (John Spraggs) writes: >A possible cause is automatic repaginate. If FullWrite is anything like >Word 4.0, you will notice an enormous difference. I had a 200k text file that >took more than 8 hours to change about 700 CR characters to LFs. The disk >was being accessed continuously and the % complete digit was taking tens of >minutes to increment. > >The whole thing completed in less than 5 minutes with automatic repaginate >off. This was with a 1 Meg Mac+ and a CMS-80 external HD. If you're doing a lot of text processing, I'd recommend QUED 2.07 from Paragon Concepts. It's nothing short of amazing. We get people coming in who have grabbed text off a mainframe with imbeded spaces that they want to convert to an import file or a Word merge document. QUED will strip LFs, replace spaces with tabs, built-in GREP, etc. That 5 minutes would have been under 30 seconds with QUED. Ken -- Ken Hancock '90 | Now that I'm employed, Consultant | standard disclaimer applies. :-) Computer Resource Center |============================================== Dartmouth College | EMAIL: isle@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
davism@creatures.cs.vt.edu (Mat Davis) (06/06/90)
From what I just read in the latest MacWorld, it looks as if Nisus 3.0 might be a good word processor, although I don't remember enough details to relate it to technical word processing in particular. I'm interested in hearing more about Nisus (3.0), in particular in comparison with Word. I had considered using FullWrite for a lot of my research note-taking and so on because of the built-in drawing features, but I decided to stick with Word 4.0 and MacDraw II when I found out that a FW paragraph style couldn't "include" a ruler, but was limited to changing *both* the left and right margins by an equal amount. (I frequently use bulleted lists where there's a hanging indent for the first line, and I couldn't get FW to do that using only a style.) There was one other missing feature (or misfeature) of FullWrite that caused me to decide to stick with Word, but offhand I can't remember that one. Mat
ljane@halley.UUCP (Linda Cast) (06/06/90)
In article <410@creatures.cs.vt.edu> davism@vtopus.cs.vt.edu (Mat Davis) writes: >I'm interested in hearing >more about Nisus (3.0), in particular in comparison with Word. I have a Nisus demo (which they will send if you want one - (619) 481-1477. It includes a Word comparison,and looks like a really hot package. It does one thing especially useful for me - lets you program keys, and also allows you to use user-created macros. I need a macro for taking Mac Interleaf files to Troff. Has anyone written that, or else a macro to strip Mac Interleaf files to ascii?
Leo.Bores@f14.n114.z1.fidonet.org (Leo Bores) (06/06/90)
In an article of <30 May 90 22:59:41 GMT>, tj@peirce.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R
Johnson) writes:
TR> I do a lot of technical writing for scientific journals and
TR>conferences. Soon I will also begin writing my dissertation which I
TR>expect to be about 100 single spaced pages. I am trying to find out
TR>if there is anything I can use on the Mac that is easier and nearly
TR>equivalent to LaTeX. LaTeX produces excellent output, but requires a
TR>great deal of effort to do certain types of tasks like including
TR>pictures or modifying document styles. TeX previewers help, but it
TR>would still be nice to have an overall easier to use system.
It is doubtful that you will find all of these features within a Mac WP, but
NISUS seems to come close. I'm spoiled in that I write in WORD 4.0b; bring in
references via ENDNOTE, and place the completed manuscript in PageMaker 4.0
where cross-referencing is handled in the Story Editor. There is a PD cross
reference software out - but the name escapes me at the moment.
I'm quite disappointed with WP's on the Mac having been completely spoiled by
XYWRITE on the IBM - especially version 4 which does all the things you
requested.
Leo Bores, M.D.
--
Uucp: ...{gatech,ames,rutgers}!ncar!asuvax!stjhmc!14!Leo.Bores
Internet: Leo.Bores@f14.n114.z1.fidonet.orgLeo.Bores@f14.n114.z1.fidonet.org (Leo Bores) (06/06/90)
In an article of <2 Jun 90 01:29:23 GMT>, ddaniel@portia.Stanford.EDU (D.
Daniel Sternbergh) writes:
DD>Count me as one of the "hc's". Now when EndNote supports a
DD>glossary-like list of common reference sources, so it's easier to add
DD>"yet another important paper from good ol' JAS (Journal of Arcane
DD>Science)" it will be even more invaluable.
Add to that the long awaited ability to automatically remove duplicates and I
will go from "hc" to "HC"!
Leo Bores, M.D.
--
Uucp: ...{gatech,ames,rutgers}!ncar!asuvax!stjhmc!14!Leo.Bores
Internet: Leo.Bores@f14.n114.z1.fidonet.org