Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Is there any wordprocessor in unix
Message-ID: <10507@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 7 Jul 89 13:58:08 GMT
References: <4856@macom1.UUCP> <248@arnor.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 27

In article <248@arnor.UUCP> uri@arnor.UUCP (Uri Blumenthal) writes:
>From article <4856@macom1.UUCP>, by larry@macom1.UUCP (Larry Taborek):
>> From article <7868@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>, by mysore@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Swamy Bale):
>>>    Just wondering, is there any word processor utility in UNIX bsd 4.2
>> Yes, its called 'vi'.
>Great. And it has all those fancy fonts, it can format the text in 
>two columns and make a lot of other things usual WP's do? Or you'll
>tell that I need also troff, fonts for it (who knows where from),
>special previewer and so on?

This is getting pretty silly.  The original question was too vague --
just what was the term "word processor" supposed to denote?  UNIX comes
standard with a variety of text editors suitable for editing any text
file that conforms to normal UNIX conventions.  Special-purpose files
require special-purpose software.  WYSIWYG formatters are available as
third-party software; the (fairly) "standard" UNIX formatting facilities
rely on embedded formatter commands (which can be edited with a standard
system text editor), with formatting performed separately to map the
common formatter input text file onto a variety of different output
media without requiring any changes in the input file to accommodate
output device characteristics, something WYSIWYG formatters cannot do.
On the other hand, the separate formatter and device translator approach
can come close to WYSIWYG, by running a "if file changes, reformat it"
loop as one layer (window) process while you're editing in another layer
process.  I do that frequently, using "cip" to interactively draw
diagrams, and so forth.  If you have the tools and know how to use them
my opinion is that the standard UNIX approach beats WYSIWYG hands down.