sietsma@latcs1.oz.au (Jocelyn Sietsma Penington) (12/19/90)
I have recently acquired an ibm-clone, primarily for word-processing my thesis. I want something that will display mathematical formulae, greek letters, etc. It doesn't absolutely have to be WYSIWYG (although that would be nice) but it has to be nice to use as a bulk word processor. Can anybody suggest any packages? Thanks for your help JSP -- (Jocelyn Penington, a.k.a. Sietsma - feel free to use either) Email: sietsma@LATCS1.oz.au Address: Materials Research Laboratory Phone: (03) 319 3775 or (03) 479 1057 PO Box 50, Melbourne 3032 Nothing here binds the Dept of Defence, LaTrobe Uni or even me, to anything.
whitejon@acf5.NYU.EDU (jonathan white) (12/20/90)
In article <9358@latcs1.oz.au> sietsma@latcs1.oz.au (Jocelyn Sietsma Penington) writes: > >I want something that will display mathematical formulae, >greek letters, etc. It doesn't absolutely have to be WYSIWYG (although >that would be nice) but it has to be nice to use as a bulk word processor. > >Can anybody suggest any packages? I'd like to recomend WordPerfect 5.1 It's not a WYSIWYG but then it doesn't run as slow as WYSIWYG either. I find that the preview mode is adiquate for everything that I do. Has GREAT tables to. Jonathan
jjj@ccadfa.adfa.oz.au (Joni J. Johnson) (12/20/90)
I have found ChiWriter to be an excellent wp for the bucks. It's much cheaper than many others, but does Greek letters, mathematical symbols, several other fonts, and has facilities to do multi-line equations. I used it for my thesis and I had some very messy equations-subscripted Greek characters, etc. The nice thing about ChiWriter is that what you see is what you get-rather than having control characters all over the screen and not knowing what it really looks like until you print it out, you see on the screen exactly what you'll print out (once you're done with the line that is). You can do multi-line summation and integral signs/equations. The (apocryphal) story is that a computer whiz wanted the perfect wp to write his thesis on and came up with this. It's always been able to do what I want-you can even design characters and symbols. Good luck on your hunt!
eric@ultima.socs.uts.edu.au (Eric Lindsay) (12/21/90)
Another word processor with equation handling is Lotus Manuscript. This can handle about 90% of the things required by our users (they have to use TeX if they need more). We evaluated about 50 word processors before selecting Manuscript, however that was several years ago and some of the others may now have equal capabilities. I've been using it to write manuals for a computer system, typically exceeding 100 pages per file, and it is fine on an AT for that size. Bit sluggish on an XT for large files, and you do need a few meg of disk space. The user interface and approach is ... diferent ... but our office staff picked it up readily and didn't complain much about it. Potential problems: it is typically business costly package. Also, Lotus have bought another, Windows based, word processor company, and therefore will probably stop updating Manuscript (it went through V1.0, 2.0 and is at present on 2.1). Printing facilities are very much aimed at Postscript Eric Lindsay, School of Maths, Uni of Technology Sydney