Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!warwick!anduk!lee
From: lee@anduk.co.uk (Liam R. Quin)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Document Abstraction (was: what is a word processor)
Message-ID: <31@nx32s.anduk.co.uk>
Date: 30 Jul 89 18:58:49 GMT
References: <20306@adm.BRL.MIL> <26558@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <18681@mimsy.UUCP> <8735@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <1438@l.cc.purdue.edu> <946@csv.viccol.edu.au>
Reply-To: lee@nx32s.UUCP (0000-Liam R. Quin)
Organization: Unixsys (UK) Ltd, Warrington, England
Lines: 49

dougcc@csv.viccol.edu.au (Douglas Miller):
> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

>[..] Let me fantacise a while:
>
> A document is stored in a way that clearly represents its structure, rather
> than any particular visual representation.  [...software can...]
> represent the document [...] in a number of different formats, including:
>
>  o  A format that represents the structure of the document [...]
>
>  o  A format optimised for reading [...]
>
>  o  As above, but divided into pages.  This would be used for printed
>     documents.

I suggest that you take a look at some of the work being done with SGML
and structured documents.  SGML word processors are beginning to crawl
out of the dark coffee-stained mugs of insane programmers throughout
the world...

SGML was designed with exactly such goals in mind, and you can buy software
off the shelf that goes some way towards what you want, provided you have
the `right' hardware (e.g. Sun, Mac).

Of course, many word processors use style sheets, but I know of very
few which actually present the author with `objects' and allow
manipulation of the document structuer.  Fewer still on Unix...

>> I can assure you that an easily programmed downloadable character set,
>> with the usual display sizes on a terminal, would be more valuable than
>> any batch processer like TeX or, even worse, troff.

There are products like Syntactics' CDMS word processor, which
use troff as a back end, so you can do maths in eqn if you want.
These tend to work with any ASCII screen, and have programable
character sets for what it's worth.
Despite the zillion bugs, I still like CDMS for some applications.

Another approach is to use document previewers.
Elan, For example, have a troff (`eroff') previewer for a variety of screens.
Probably you can find others, too.   There are also TeX previewers.


-- 
Lee Russell Quin, Unixsys UK Ltd, The Genesis Centre, Birchwood,
Warrington, ENGLAND, WA3 7BH; Tel. +44 925 828181, Fax +44 925 827834
	lee%anduk.uucp@ai.toronto.edu;  {utzoo,uunet}!utai!anduk!lee
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