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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: Unix, vi, nroff, and troff for businesses
Message-ID: <7196@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 12-Sep-86 02:19:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.7196
Posted: Fri Sep 12 02:19:19 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Sep-86 20:01:34 EDT
References: <3702@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 24

> 4.  I don't want to get into WYSIWIG vs. command-driven, but it is clear
>     that if people are taught command-driven formatting--by people, by
>     the way, I mean secretaries, not techies--they like it.

Well, there are opinions on both sides of this fence.  I'm a techie, and I
wish to h*ll I never had to work with *roff again; I wish I had a reasonable
WYSIWYG system.  I suspect I could do a lot of the stuff I now do with *roff
with Interleaf; unfortunately, my workstation isn't licensed for it.  When
Rusty Sandberg did one of the NFS papers, he closed it with thanks to
Interleaf for making it possible to do the document without using "troff"!

I suspect for typical business use, any extra power (or, at least, power per
buck) you get out of some non-formatting text editor + *roff would largely
be wasted.  You might look at getting some WYSIWYG program for UNIX, if you
decide to go with UNIX.

BTW, there are WYSIWYG editors that can keep their files as straight ASCII
as well; Interleaf, for one.  (Note: Interleaf is expensive and requires a
big-mapped display, and is more powerful than you'd need for business word
processing.)
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com (or guy@sun.arpa)