Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:20:43 -0500 From: icantthinkofone <icantthinkofone@charter.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: wyswyg editors for tex (was re: replacement for openoffice) Message-ID: <470B802B.9000002@charter.net> In-Reply-To: <1191897714.982.25.camel@pinot.fmjassoc.com> References: <1191897714.982.25.camel@pinot.fmjassoc.com>
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Frank Jahnke wrote: >> From what little experience I have with PS and *roff the idea of >> hacking inline embedded languages just for typesetting sounds stupid >> beyond belief.... >> > > You have to learn one of the troff macro packages. -ms is the easiest, > but I agree that a wysiwyg document processor is just easier for this > purpose. I'm agnostic about this one, and use Abiword (which I have > never had any issues compiling, and do install all of the plug-ins), > TextMaker, OO.o, Word or WP. For this purpose it does not really matter > much, and I have all installed, either natively or in a virtual machine. > > For technical or scientific writing, though, there is nothing that can > replace TeX or troff unless you invest a lot of money into adjunct > programs for Word. Even then you still wind up with an ugly document. > Sometimes that does not matter (like business letters) but hey, I'm a > perfectionist and want my documents to look good in addition to > containing good information. > > FWIW, my "typical" scientific article has over 100 references (which > change as the document is written), a lot of partial differential > equations and their solutions, graphs, chemistry, tables, images (like > photomicrographs), and so forth. For that troff and TeX are the only > way to go unless you want to spend a considerable amount of money for > Word add-ins. By itself Word is not that good, but an ecosystem has > developed around it to make it workable. And it is the standard. > > I'll stand by my basic recommendation. For everyday use and Word > compatibility, buy TextMaker (and PlanMaker if you use spreadsheets). > For the heavy lifting use TeX (or LaTeX or LyX) or troff and its > pre-processors and macro packages. > > >> and since all the more "traditional" (sorry I do not think of any >> inline text language as being "traditional") >> > > Here you are misguided. The text formatters *are* the traditional way > to process documents. In fact, Unix existed only because its commercial > justification was the text processing system. And that was built on > DEC's runoff (with its embedded codes), which the Unix fellows > abbreviated to roff, which became nroff for fixed-width character > devices, and troff for typesetters. > > It took WordStar to change that paradigm (there are many other ones, of > course, but WS was the gorilla in the late 1970s and early 1980s). > > Frank > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > > Can you explain the difference between troff and groff. I thought groff is the more useable troff, or do I have that backwards, or is that only a fbsd replacement?
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