Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!dftsrv!nssdcs!grobbins
From: grobbins@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov (Grobbins (IDM))
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Word Processing under Mac vs Unix (was Nisus)
Message-ID: <2684@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: 3 Jul 90 19:13:01 GMT
References: <3918@dogie.macc.wisc.edu> <5309@stpstn.UUCP> <8964@goofy.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov
Reply-To: grobbins@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov
Organization: NSSDC Greenbelt Md.
Lines: 28

In article <8964@goofy.Apple.COM> teener@apple.com (Michael Teener) writes:
>By the way, someone really needs to come up with a better model than even 
>the Unix-ish regular expression.  I have a hell of a time explaining this 
>stuff to someone who has successfully avoiding ex/vi/grep arcana.

Finding a good interface for regular expressions is damn tough.  In
designing Nisus the single biggest user interface issue we weren't able
to resolve was how to make Nisus' superset of grep available without
overloading ASCII characters.  Our solution, grafting a menu system
onto some regular expressions, was better than the competition's but 
still disappointing.

For those of you who haven't used Nisus, replacing all occurences of
one or more spaces with tabs would involve choosing three item from
menus.  They then appear in the dialog as

  Find:         || Space || << 1 or more occurences ||
  Replace With: || Tab ||

If anyone has a seen a better solution (no untried ideas, please; prototype 
it up before posting) I'd love to hear about it.

Grobbins           grobbins@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov

Disclaimer: no connection with Paragon Concepts.  Anymore.  And to give
credit where it's due, the primary designer of Nisus' Find/Replace was
Michael Ogawa.  Free demo copies of Nisus are available by calling
619-481-1477.  Void where prohibited by taste.  Do not remove under penalty