Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!spool2.mu.edu!uwm.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.applications Subject: Re: When will new WordPerfect be available? Message-ID: <17738@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 17 Jan 91 17:34:16 GMT References: <1991Jan15.192859.1@ccvax.iastate.edu> Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 61 In article <1991Jan15.192859.1@ccvax.iastate.edu> taab5@ccvax.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett) writes: >In article <17621@cbmvax.commodore.com>, daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: >> What do you want a word processor for anyway? Real Men write directly in >> DTP programs. Or in markup languages, like TeX or Scribe. No word processor >> is powerful enough. > Microsoft Word is, period. Microsoft Word, in one package, includes >ALL the tools that you would ever need to typeset a book. Is that powerful >enough for you? If I can't write programs in it, it's really not enough. Which is why I like Scribe (one of these days I'll learn TeX, since its on the Amiga) and Emacs. Typesetting a book is easy, _any_ DTP type program can do that. Some make it easier than others. The goal of a wordprocessor, of course, is one of two things -- either come close enough to automating all the publishing you would care to do, or to make writing alone so easy you do all your writing in the wordprocessor and then load that file into the DTP program. Now, I haven't used Word, maybe it is good. I have yet to see any word processor on any system that does what I want, though. First off all, it has to be a good text editor. Meaning fast and flexible. I want to set up the editing commands as I like them, and that means from the keyboard, Emacs-like. Any good text editor allows this, even if it's not Emacs (CED, for instance). I want a good macro capability, with a real programming language like AREXX or E-Lisp. I want word abbrevs. I want active spelling check. Next comes the formatting part. It must be 100% WYSIWYG, or I might as well use a markup language. Of course it knows about different text environments (what that call style sheets these days. It should be able to use graphics, tables, formulas, etc. as easily as simple text, and text in any font. Of course tables, figures, etc. can be attached to any other object, and it's easy to move them anyway if the wordprocessor decides to put them in the wrong place. The rules for such placement should be easily definable, anyway, to help avoid this. It should know about headers, sections, subsections, etc. and let me define them as I like them, arbitrarily deep. It should know about structured documents, so that the guts of my "Chapter 5" in my "Everything about the A3000" manual sits in a subfile and also stands alone as the entire "Zorro III Bus Specification" manual. Anything externally referenced, such as subdocuments and graphics, should know ask for file notification so that it can update itself at runtime. It should know how to handle contents, table, and figure pages, index, and bibliography. The bibliography and footnote style should be independent of the entry format, so I can pick IEEE or ACS or whatever as I wish. Well, that's at least scratching the surface. I know far more folks out there who've only used wordprocessors, any of them, and are happy with them than those who've used TeX or Scribe extensively and have found wordprocessors that really make them happy. Unfortunately, if you're in school today, or probably for the past several years, you're only exposed to wordprocessors. Which may explain why most of the wordprocessors out there are weak compared to markups which have been around for 10 or 20 years. > -MB- -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "Don't worry, 'bout a thing. 'Cause every little thing, gonna be alright" -Bob Marley