Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG flamage (was Re: what is a word processor and is it any good)
Message-ID: <9091@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 27 Jul 89 19:52:15 GMT
References: <20306@adm.BRL.MIL> <26558@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <9053@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 58

In article <1989Jul26.184314.22495@eci386.uucp> clewis@eci386.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes:

>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!

Umm, how about using the included WP to DCA conversion, then looking for
a DCA to whatever conversion on the mainframe side?   But seriously,
where are you going to be that you can't find a PC these days, and you
can carry the program around on a floppy just as easily as the document.
If this is a real problem, just get a 10 lb. laptop and carry the whole
machine (try that with your mainframe!).
If you want plain ascii you can always write the file out that way and
lose only the formatting, or you can do some magic search and replace
commands (or macros) to change WP's formatting codes into your favorite
ascii characters.

>However, you completely missed his point.  TeX and [nt]roff documents
>tend to be (strong tendancy) printer independent.

No, I addressed this point but perhaps you missed it because you are
not aware of the changes that have happend to PC wordprocessors in
the last year or two.  Word >4.0, WP 5.0, (and probably WS 5.0 and
several others) do provide this capability both by allowing measurement
(vs. character) based formatting and allowing the use of redefinable
styles instead of imbedding "real" font names and measurements throughout
the document.

>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".

No problem with WP 5.0 if your printer is one of the 700 or so models that
are supported or you feel up to hacking your own driver.  *And* the
graphics page preview will represent the output on the intended device
instead of the best-fit for your screen (size-wise, anyway - they don't
know everything about font shapes).

>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....

Yes, I thought so, you are talking about WP 4.2 or earlier.  Well times
have changed.  WP 5.0 knows all about font sizes now and margins, tabs,
positioning, etc. are done using measurments, making it trivial to
use different fonts (which you now select by name and point size or if
you want to stay generic you can use "small", "large", etc. that are
mapped according to the printer).  Better yet, use styles for everything
which makes it trivial to modify all of your formatting as long as it is
consistent.  Also, since you can search/replace codes as well as text, it
is pretty simple to make global changes even if you weren't consistent.

Les Mikesell