Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:14844 comp.text:1759
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!wpg!tulane!barad
From: barad@tulane.tulane.edu (Herb Barad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.text
Subject: Re: Dissertation on a MAC vs UNIX
Message-ID: <87@tulane.tulane.edu>
Date: 6 Apr 88 12:50:45 GMT
References: <1290@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> <23006@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: barad@tulane.UUCP (Herb Barad)
Organization: C.S. Dept., Tulane Univ., New Orleans, LA
Lines: 44
Keywords: Hypercard, bibliographies, cross-reference
Summary: Xref stack

In article <23006@bbn.COM> mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) writes:
*Method 1  -- Easy
******* *     ****
*
*<<SET architectureFIG=1>> <<SET BlackBoxFIG=2>> <<SET throughputFIG=3>>
*<<SET inputTAB=1> <<SET outputTAB=2>>
*
*Then in the body of the document and in the figure captions I type:
*
*	As illustrated in Figure <<architectureFIG>>, ...
*
*and
*	Figure <<architectureFIG>>: Network architecture used in
*	this study.  (Not all connections shown.)
*
*Then when I want to change the order of appearance, I only have to
*renumber the <<SET>> statements.  No searching through the document for
*multiple references.
*
*Printing:  Select Print Merge and click on the Print button in the
*--------   dialog box.

I have created a Hypercard stack called Xref that does just this (well,
a little differently).  I used this on my dissertation and it worked
pretty good.  Also, the HC stack acts as a bibliographic database, so
you can use it for other work. 

I did run into some problems, but they were mostly MS Words.  For example,
Word has some pretty serious limitations as to the # of variables you can
set in a merge (I think it's 128).  Well, I had over 80 references and
enough figures, tables, and equations to exceed that total.  This forced
me to work around this by doing some manual substitutions by hand.  Also,
it's slow!  My entire dissertation took about 40 minutes to process.
However, you don't process the paper until the end and how many times
in your life do you write a dissertation.

It works very well with smaller papers (~20 pages).  This stack was posted
some time ago (I believe it's up to version 1.3).

I'm still waiting for FullWrite...

-- 
Herb Barad	Electrical Engineering Dept., Tulane Univ.
USENET/CSNET:	barad@tulane