Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:48:32 -0500 From: icantthinkofone <icantthinkofone@charter.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: wyswyg editors for tex (was re: replacement for openoffice) Message-ID: <470B86B0.6070505@charter.net> In-Reply-To: <470B802B.9000002@charter.net> References: <1191897714.982.25.camel@pinot.fmjassoc.com> <470B802B.9000002@charter.net>
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icantthinkofone wrote: > 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? > _______________________________________________ > 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" > And another thing, how do you choose whether to use TeX or troff? What's the diff?
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