Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!woods
From: woods@tmsoft.uucp (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Which DWB?
Summary: either DWB 2.0 from your vendor, or SoftQuad's package
Message-ID: <1989Apr14.032241.9841@tmsoft.uucp>
Date: 14 Apr 89 03:22:41 GMT
References: <906@telly.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@tmsoft.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Organization: G.A.W. Consulting
Lines: 80

In article <906@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>- Vanilla old ditroff, still sold by SCO and others, together with the
>  publicly posted jetroff Laserjet drivers/fonts;

This one is fine, especially if all you have is a laser-printer of some
sort.  However, be absolutely sure you have DWB 2.0 (i.e. di-troff).
Making old troff work with modern printers is painful (I know).

JetRoff is a commercial quality shareware package that is extremely
powerful and flexible.  It will work any HP LJ emulation (or the real
thing) to the limit.  There are also several ditroff->PostScript
translators available, and at least the one I tried worked fine.

I've seen a ditroff->TEK4014 filter, and 'proof' is available for the
AT&T 630 terminals.

The only real limitation with the HP LJ is that it is limited to 16
"fonts" (typefaces and point sizes) per page.  This is more than
enough for even your fanciest sales literature, but can be restrictive
for eqn.

>- Elan, chosen by SCO as its future DWB;
>
>- SoftQuad, apparently being recommended by AT&T.

There's also Image Network's product.

They all appear to be much the same from the sales literature.  I've
seen SoftQuad's manuals, and have seen it in use (at AT&T Canada) on
fast PostScript printers.  It certainly does the job.  Some of their
extensions may indeed be unique, and they support a full-screen
semi-WYSIWIG word-processor.  My personal favorite is SoftQuad, but
then I know people who've worked on it, and it is Canadian.

All three (I think) provide X preview software and support many
printers and systems.

If you want to pay lots for extended and enhanced DWB, go for what you
can afford.  Otherwise, get the "standard" release of DWB 2.0 from your
Unix vendor, and JetRoff.  It will also do the job.  Of course some
vendors won't want to supply DWB2.0 (Everex, for example).

********* comment/opinion *********

Just today I was reading the AT&T DWB 2.0 manual (yeah, the one in the
red binder).  It's not that thick, is quite easy to read, and covers
all of the essentials of mm, tbl, nroff/troff, etc.  It includes the
man pages, tutorials, reference manuals, and the works.

For the past three months I've been assisting users with WordPerfect
4.2 and Word Era.  Both of these word-processors have tremendously
thick manuals, and incredibly convoluted user interfaces (did you know
you have to find the function key sequence representing "Screen" AND
press return to re-draw a scrambled screen in WordPerfect?!?!?!?!  And
the same key sequence to save and exit will kill your typing if you
are in insert mode in Word Era!?!?!?!).  MS-Word is only slightly better.

I have read NUMEROUS references to the ease of teaching fundamental
{n,t}roff (with help of a macro package like mm, me, or ms) to ANYONE
who can type in less than an hour.  I had no trouble learning it, and
have had no trouble teaching anyone else to use it.  In fact there are
other so called word processors out there based on the same model
(Word-Pro, Paperclip, etc.).

Our client paid many dollars for all the people who use WordPerfect to
attend a full day course in which they learned very little that I
didn't have to re-teach, or they didn't have to re-learn from the
manual.  WordPerfect isn't cheap itself!

Then there's TEX.  I'd bet it's even easier to learn/use (with LaTEX)
than troff, though I'd never admit it in public, and you'll never catch
ME using TEX!  :-)

Sorry Evan (and everyone else)... this has turned into something that
looks and awful lot like a flame.... :-(
-- 
						Greg A. Woods.

woods@{{tmsoft,utgpu,gate,ontmoh}.UUCP,utorgpu.BITNET,gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU}
+1-416-443-1734 [h],	+1-416-595-5425 [w]		Toronto, Ontario, Canada