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From: ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG flamage
Message-ID: <26726@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 28 Jul 89 05:45:44 GMT
References: <20306@adm.BRL.MIL> <26558@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <9053@chinet.chi.il.us> <9091@chinet.chi.il.us>
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Reply-To: ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
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In article <9091@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>In article <1989Jul26.184314.22495@eci386.uucp> clewis@eci386.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes:
>
>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!).

Since when does one need a mainframe to run **IX and the text
processing tools associated with it? The same AT clone that will run
MiSerable DOS will run **IX. Several of the high horsepower portables
have been advertised as UNIX machines.

>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.

Maybe WP has (finally) developed a search-replace that allows you to
replace text AND codes, but this is still an unusual feature in PeeCee
word processors.  Typically, they are extremely restrictive in what
can go into a search and replace operation.  Closure and conditional
replacement are still more unusual.  Moreover, you have to ~know~ what
the underlying codes are.

Maybe your experience is different from mine, but I am frequently asked
by colleagues to make rough translations of documents from one format
to another. Many PeeCee word processors do not tell you the control
codes or format used even for common operations such as underlining or
super/subscripting. Typically you have to find this information out by
printing a text and comparing the raw source run through an octal or
hex dump program. Even companies specializing in the writing of
conversion software have a hell of a time on this point. (As an
exercise, try to figure out the control codes used by MicroShaft
Weird.)

In contrast, compare the task of changing, for example, bold to
italics, in an nroff/troff document, with what it takes in most PeeCee
word processors:

g/\\fB/s//\\fI/g

or

g/\\fB/s//\\fI/gc

If you've used macros such as .BO or .IT, the task is even simpler.

As further tests (based on the sort of thing I am called upon to do by
my publishers), compare the number of strokes required by the usual
word processor to (a) switch from footnotes to endnotes; (b) change the
margins in an nnn (50 <= nnn <= 500) page document; (c) properly place
footnotes that require more than 1/2 of a physical page.

(To forestall the argument that only a hacker would appreciate
vi/nroff, I would note that I teach modern Japanese history.)

Earl H. Kinmonth
History Department
University of California, Davis
916-752-1636 (voice, fax [2300-0800 PDT])
916-752-0776 secretary

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