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From: burgoyne@eng.umd.edu (John R. Burgoyne)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: .RTF files. Can WordPerfect be used to create them instead of Word?
Message-ID: <1990Dec19.052751.27820@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 90 05:27:51 GMT
References: <1990Dec18.044017.17533@eng.umd.edu> <1990Dec18.133649.8550@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <27846@cs.yale.edu>
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tom haapanen replies:

>Indeed, the RTF format is ASCII, but it's RIDICULOUS to think of
>writing real help documents (100-200K) in RTF by hand!  Right now, I
>think WfW is the best bet.

and Joel Spolsky counters:

>Writing RTF is not any harder than writing, say, in TeX or troff. If
>you really want to save the cost of WfW it is not at all unreasonable
>to do this.

AND THE VERDICT IS:

tom is right.

Sorry Joel, you submit a lot of nice postings to this group and we all
appreciate your time and effort in doing so. I have personally benefited
several times from other postings you made.

HERE'S WHY:

     Take a look at the sample .RTF files that come with HELPEX. I can
make sense of them, and I can write macros to insert codes etc. as I
wish, but it would take too much time.

     Tonight, I purchased Word for Windows at our school's bookstore
for $169. I am using it right now. I was able to make a great start on
my help project in a couple of hours using W4W. Further, I could have
saved $40 if I had ordered it through our Computer Emporium, but that
would have taken several weeks. (Instant Gratification is nice, not
needing to worry about matching text formatting commands is wonderful!)

It is kind of a shame that MS has us over a barrel on this one.

Thanks everybody, see you on the net.

Robert