Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!zwicky
From: zwicky@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: wanted: Ultrix word processing software
Message-ID: <64@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Fri, 11-Sep-87 12:20:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: tut.64
Posted: Fri Sep 11 12:20:32 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 19:00:26 EDT
References: <673@moogvax.UUCP> <101@mergsun.UUCP>
Reply-To: zwicky%tut.cis.ohio-state.edu@osu-eddie.UUCP (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Distribution: na
Organization: The Ohio State University, CIS Dept.
Lines: 56

In article <101@mergsun.UUCP> root@mergsun.UUCP (Mergsun System Administrator) writes:
>Terry,
>	If you insist on staying on UNIX for document processing, my suggestion
>is to get your site a PostScript(tm) compatable laser printer (i.e. Apple
>LaserWriter+, Dec PrintServer40, IBM, HP, etc ) and install a set of filters
>created by Adobe Systems (the parents of Postscript) to allow BSD/SysV to
>communicate with these devices.  They allow standard lineprinter in addition
>to troff and ditroff output.

A good idea; we're doing it here. The software is called TranScript,
it works well, and they have a sane licensing agreement. We adore it.
It even comes with ptroff, a *roff for PostScript. We run it to three
different printers, all shared with Macintoshes, two LaserWriter+s and
a DataProducts LZR2665. LaserWriters are reasonably cheap, but low
volume; the Dataproducts lacks the extra fonts of a LaserWriter+, but
is faster and can deal with higher volumes.

>	As to the word process aspect of you problem, if *roff is not to your
>secretarys liking, I suggest something like Scribe(tm) which is a full blown
>word processor.

Unh-unh. Scribe is a text formatter, not a word processor. BIG
difference.  Scribe formats text beautifully, and has a better
interface than *roff, but it costs big bucks, and it has less
flexibilty. The cheap, UNIX-style route is Gnu Emacs for an editor and
LaTeX for a formatter, both of which suffer from being over-flexible
and expert-friendly, but there are a lot worse things than that to
suffer from. THere are word-processors for UNIX, but I've never seen
one that I liked. (I'm a technical writer, and do some serious
formatting - I like my 200 page documents with automatic tables of
contents, easy indexing, beautiful typesetting, as fast as possible,
with custom formatting. LaTeX is my thing.)

>
>HOWEVER ! ! ! I would suggest you get those users a Macintosh Plus or SE
>with a LaserWriter+ and on of many word processors like Microsofts' Word.
>Within a few months you will be able to use your Unix system as a file server
>using a software package by Centram call TOPS and hardware by Kinetics called
>Fastpath.

Give me a break. One Plus? I'm going from my Plus (for me alone) with
20M to a II, so as to get some serious work done. Word does not cut it
for me as a formatter either. Not to say that I don't love the Mac; I
do lots of short documents on it, in, of all things, MacWrite. Longer
ones go in MacTeX; if that gets too slow, I kermit them to the UNIX
machine I do my long documents on and run them through TeX there.

On a detail, we run Tops over Kinetics boxes now, and have been doing
so for some months. The Fastpath boxes are great; we do a lot of
things using them. Tops is not so great; we've run into reliability
problems. It also runs only on some UNIX machines, because it requires
kernel mods. We run it on Pyramids.

>
>Ricky Schrieber	 / Principal Engineer / (516)-434-2615
>Linotype Company /  425 Oser Avenue   / Hauppauge, NY 11788