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From: bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (Robert Montante)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: 'vi' vs. other word processors
Message-ID: <1423@iuvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Sep-86 19:33:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: iuvax.1423
Posted: Sun Sep 14 19:33:12 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Sep-86 21:37:51 EDT
Reply-To: bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (Robert Montante)
Distribution: net
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 21

I consider myself a big fan of 'vi', but when I want to do pure word-processing
I prefer a true word-processor, such as is common on MSDOS-grade machines.  One
big advantage is that you never have to worry about getting near the end of the
line with a Multimate or a Wordstar or whatever, and the words won't get broken
in the middle.  (Perhaps vi can be tickled into behaving this way, but not only
do I not know how, the word-processors DON'T have to be tickled.)

Word-processors frequently offer nice text-composition aids like 'rulers', you
can move the margins and tabs (most corporate communications don't thrive on a
tab every 8 char's), and you can right-justify without you having to choose your
words as luckily as I did up to the previous line :-)  They'll also reformat so
that you can see what you've been doing, without having to send it off to the
printer.

In short, vi is a better general-purpose editor, but a good word-processor is a
better dedicated word-processor.  I don't believe that most offices write much
source code, nor do I think they produce many documents in volume sufficient to
warrant the set-up time of installing NROFF (or TeX, or even Wordstar) special
formatting commands.

Why not recommend a hardware setup that supports both?