Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!eci386!clewis
From: clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG flamage (was Re: what is a word processor and is it any good)
Message-ID: <1989Jul26.184314.22495@eci386.uucp>
Date: 26 Jul 89 18:43:14 GMT
References: <20306@adm.BRL.MIL> <26558@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <9053@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: clewis@eci386.UUCP (Chris Lewis)
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates: Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 46

In article <9053@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>In article <43132@bbn.COM> cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) writes:
>>    they lose most of the logical structure of the document, and so
>>    impede its text being used in other contexts (where the printing
>>    rules may be different).

>OK, how do I print a TeX or nroff document on a system that has neither?

The same way with WP documents when your DOS machine doesn't have it
either ;-)

Actually, it's quite easy, given that the system has *something* similar
to TeX or nroff.  Usually close to impossible with a WP document.

Troff or TeX input is *plain* ASCII - you can copy the files
to any machine and convert them (or at least read the text) easily 
with a text editor.  Eg: the time it took me under 2 hours to convert 
my 60 page thesis from eqn/tbl/troff -ms to IBM Script/GML on an EBCDIC 
(IBM VM/CMS) machine - and I had been using Script for less than a day 
at the time.  Try to do that with a WP file!

However, you completely missed his point.  TeX and [nt]roff documents
tend to be (strong tendancy) printer independent.  Thus, whether I print to
a Postscript engine with full graphics support, or an ASR33 which doesn't 
even have lowercase, the output will look as similar as it is possible for 
it to be given the limitations of the printer without you doing anything
except specify which printer.  That's what he meant by "rules".

My experience with things like WP is that you have to fiddle the document 
for each printer to get it to come out at all.  Eg: you select font 1 in
your document....  Um, well, that's 10 point Roman italic on the HPLJ K 
cartridge, 14 point landscape AvantGarde on a HPLJII, and inverse-video 
Kanji on the Postscript printer.  It can take hours to simply route one
document from one printer to another (and complaints from the customer
that that *&^^%&^( WP package that *he* *insisted* on having doesn't work).

[Chris Torek said one of the drawbacks of TeX/troff is that they'll do
something even with line noise - that's also part of their strength - 
they'll do something reasonable even with text with no formatting directives
whatsoever.  Feeding line noise into WP is more likely to simply crash
your machine ;-)]
-- 
Chris Lewis, R.H. Lathwell & Associates: Elegant Communications Inc.
UUCP: {uunet!mnetor, utcsri!utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis
Phone: (416)-595-5425