Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!jik
From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: is it possable to mget any money if i write a version of vi?
Message-ID: <1990Nov8.210915.27093@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 8 Nov 90 21:09:15 GMT
References: <1990Nov6.193301.7727@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <940@otello.sublink.org>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Reply-To: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 32

In article <940@otello.sublink.org>, venta@otello.sublink.org (Paolo Ventafridda) writes:
|> why bother to re-invent the wheel?
|> What the unix world misses is a Word Processor. As far as i know,
|> there are no public domain WPs around, and those available from
|> sw vendors are pretty expensive.
|> 
|> A simple word-wrapping/right-justif. without any printer control
|> (i.e. simple output to file, then your business to print it) would
|> make a lot of people happy (at least me).

  GNU emacs supports word-wrapping and right-justification, although you'd
have a little trouble getting it to display anything like underlining,
italics, etc., in a WYSIWYG form.  If you're willing to settle for plain
characters, then emacs can do what you want.

  Granted, it's copylefted rather than public domain, but it's close enough
for all intents and purposes as long as you're willing to make the source code
available to anybody using it who asks for it.

  Furthermore, the program EZ written in the Andrew toolkit (developed at CMU)
is pretty much WYSIWYG, including multiple fonts, spacing, justification, etc.
I believe the andrew software is freely redistributable; in fact, it may even
be on the X11R4 contrib tape.

  So it's not quite true that there are "no public domain WP's" available for
Unix.

-- 
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