Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!lsuc!eci386!woods
From: woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Is there any wordprocessor in unix
Summary: Problems?  With *roff?  Humph!
Message-ID: <1989Jul17.211715.6273@eci386.uucp>
Date: 17 Jul 89 21:17:15 GMT
References: <4856@macom1.UUCP> <248@arnor.UUCP> <1044@kuling.UUCP> <8161@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <330@umabco.UUCP> <1111@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US>
Reply-To: woods@eci386.UUCP (Greg A. Woods)
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates: Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 53

In article <1111@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US> gaggy@jolnet.UUCP (Gregory Gulik) writes:
> 
> nroff: Hard to use.  Yeah, I know, a pro can whip out a document in
> 	a matter of seconds.  I've heard that one a million times.
> 	But, let's say you would like to do something not very common,
> 	would you prefer to dig through your thick UNIX manuals,
> 	or traverse a couple menus to find what you want?

And to become a "pro" at typing simple *roff documents, using a
good quick-reference card, takes a couple of hours.  As has been
said, the menu's probably won't let you do something uncommon in
the first place.  The DWB documentation and the plethora of other
publications about *roff will provide a vast body of knowledge
from which to draw, and will help you do almost anything
imaginable.

Perpetuating the myth (YES MYTH) about Unix documentation doesn't
help any.  Neither does perpetuating the myth that people will not
read a manual or book to learn about something they want to do.

> WP:	EXPENSIVE!  Yes, maybe a company CAN afford to buy it for
> 	every one of it's users, but there are poor UNIX people
> 	out in the real world.  Yes, us students dont' exactly have
> 	$1000+ to shell out for the program.  (Hey, the PC version
> 	is still pretty expensive)

How true.  $3,500.00CDN for WP for an NCR Tower 32/600.  But DWB
is usually quite inexpensive, if not already bundled with your
system.  Of course some people find vi so repulsive they'd rather
use ed!  I don't know why a simple full screen editor is not a
standard part of Unix yet.  Perhaps it should even have Wordstar
key-bindings as the default, with Emacs as an option.

I've also seen the objection against *roff because of the ease of
hiring people already trained with WP.  Why not re-train them.
The experience will undoubtably help raise their understanding of
computers.  If you can't train a person to use *roff in a very
short time, they probably shouldn't be attempting to do that kind
of a job at this time.

The big stumbling block is often the simple act of entering the
text to be word-processed.  Again, a simple full screen editor
bundled with Unix would help tremendously.  Perhaps Jove, or
MicroEmacs (gag!) are good alternatives.  [ 1/2 :-) ]

NOTE:  You could probably substitute TeK for *roff, and many
probably will!  :-)
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft,gpu.utcs.UToronto.CA,utorgpu.BITNET}
+1-416-443-1734 [h]  +1-416-595-5425 [w]		Toronto, Ontario CANADA