Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:14755 comp.text:1750
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!cadre!pitt!jonathan
From: jonathan@pitt.UUCP (Jonathan S. Eunice)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.text
Subject: Re: Dissertation on a MAC vs UNIX
Message-ID: <3164@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 88 09:18:49 GMT
References: <2328@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Reply-To: jonathan@vax.cs.pittsburgh.edu.UUCP (Jonathan S. Eunice)
Organization: University of Pittsburgh Computer Science
Lines: 35
Keywords: bibliographies, index(es), table of contents,
Summary: Both fine, Mac nice but fewer helpers

Harry S. Delugach writes:
> Is there any Mac software that matches the functionality of *troff
> and family? 

MS Word is easy to learn and use, and makes nice-looking documents.
The page preview feature is esp. nice.  Outlines are claimed, but not
very good.  It does footnotes well, but does not provide many of the
other services you're probably used to from -mX macro packages and the troff
front-ends.  Making tables (with MacDraw or similar) is particularly
painful compared to tbl.  Equations are possible but you'll need one of
the equation-making programs if you're going to do anything fancy.
There is no automatic bibliography/citation support, but it isn't too
bad to do manually.  Displays are more difficult.  Complex parametric
figures (as in pic) are not possible, but simple figures are very easy
to specify in one of the Draw or Paint programs.  Large documents will
probably have to be split into several files.

They are from two different worlds \(em the embedded command world, and
the WYSIWYG world.  The flame.wars will begin with the comp.sys.mac
people saying:  Go with Word.  The comp.text people: Go with troff,
TeX, usw.  Personally, I use both for technical writing, and find both
acceptable.  Troff/Unix has some real advantages for long documents, in
that you can do many things automatically with little sed/awk/etc
scripts or troff-helpers that you must do by hand on the Macintosh.  The 
Mac is simpler, though, and doesn't force you do work at such a low level.
Most working time is changing the text, not formatting/setting for
output.  If you have a workstation (or a Mac) with a large screen
available, that is probably more important to the ease of editing than
which text processor you use.

I've also been pretty successful straddling the line, using both for
the same document, transferring between formats.  If you don't use
over-complex formatting, the translation is not really that great,
except for tables, figures, and equations.  It's easier to go from Mac
to Unix, btw.