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From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Scientific Word Processor?
Message-ID: <36490@cup.portal.com>
Date: 3 Dec 90 13:38:34 GMT
References: <1990Dec2.232924.22231@javelin.es.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 44

blgardne@javelin.es.com (Blaine Gardner)
in <1990Dec2.232924.22231@javelin.es.com> writes:

	After using Word Perfect for a few years, and being happy with it, I
	now find that I need a word processor that can EASILY deal with the
	usual scientific character set and mathematical formulas. Easy
	integration of graphics would help too. (Physics, chemistry,
	electronics, etc., is the kind of stuff I'm dealing with.)

	What's the best for this kind of work? ProWrite? Excellence? TeX?  I
	know that TeX can do just about anything, but how easy is it to learn?
	Does TeX provide any kind of WYSIWYG ability?

TeX, specifically Tom Rokicki's AmigaTeX, is precisely what you need to be
using for the purposes you stated.  With Tom's TeX previewer and ARexx
support you'll get as close as you can expect to "real-time WYSIWYG" in terms
of a PROFESSIONAL typesetting package.

Don Knuth (of Stanford University) developed TeX when he encountered problems
typesetting the mathematical equations for his THE ART OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
series of books, as I recall back around the early 70's.  His publisher is
Addison-Wesley who produces most, if not all, their technical, scientific, and
textbooks using TeX.  (Interestingly, A-W is located near SU and SLAC)

If you follow-through and read AND DO the examples in "The TeXbook", you can
become quite proficient within several weeks.  Look at it like learning to
drive a Formula I racing car vs. the li'l ol' lady Chevy with automatic xmsn!

PROFESSIONAL TOOLS, like AmigaTeX, have tremendous power and capability, and
with that power and capability comes the need to learn how to use it properly.

I use AmigaTeX for numerous things, but by NO stretch of the imagination can
I be called an expert ... I just follow some of the existing examples with
some mods, and that's worked fine for what I need to do.

You MUST be prepared, though, to buy additional documentation (i.e. The TeXbook
and possibly LaTeX and, depending on your interest, the other books in the
series) because the docs which accompany AmigaTeX solely describe how to use
AmigaTeX and Tom's previewer.

TeX "source code" (your docs) will work correctly and produce the same results
on ANY machine for which a valid TeX exists.

Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]