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From: jsimon@voodoo.ucsb.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Technical Word Processing
Message-ID: <5559@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 30 May 90 23:56:24 GMT
Sender: news@hub.ucsb.edu
Organization: UC, Santa Barbara. Physics Computer Services
Lines: 44

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In article <81032@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, tj@peirce.cis.ohio-state.edu (Todd R Johnson) writes...
> 
>	I do a lot of technical writing for scientific journals and...

I do too. I use FullWrite for everything. It's far from perfect, but not
as far as everything else out there.

> 
>	Below are features that I would like in a WP program. 
>
>	- Automatic numbering of sections, lists, and figures.
>	- References to other parts of the document.  

FullWrite does these very well.

>	- Bibliographies in various formats.  

FullWrite handles different formats of bibliographies, but it may not be
flexible enough for you.

>	- Support for environments.  

FullWrite has user-defined styles. They're not the same as Word's stylesheets,
but I'd say they're more similar than dissimilar. I'm not quite sure what
it is you're looking for here.

>	Frankly, I am amazed that it is so hard to find WP programs
>with these features.  Such features are quite common in many
>documents.  The Mac rags always complain about LaTeX being hard to
>use, but it looks to me like it might be easier to use to produce
>sophisticated documents.


I agree. Word processors for the Mac still have a ways to go. On the other
hand, while one can do just about anything with LaTex, it's never clear
how much time and effort it will take to do it. It's always been a balance
of Ease Of Use versus Power. It's not clear to me that it must always be
that way. I think FullWrite does bring the two a little closer.

Jonathan Simon
Dept. of Physics
University of California
Santa Barbara