From: fyl@fylz.com (Phil Hughes) Subject: Re: (was: Re: A Word Processor for Linux) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 02:44:48 GMT
Wm E. Davidsen Jr (davidsen@sixhub.UUCP) wrote:
: Note that I would like a word processor which kept all it's text in
: printable ASCII text, just so I could save, archive, source control and
: mail it. But that doesn't mean I'll do any new stuff in roff to get
: those features, just that I would like them in the next word processor.
Look at Ventura as a model. No, it isn't a word processor, it is a
page layout program designed for long document publishing but it would
satisfy your needs. This is not to say that I find Ventura as the
answer to everything but as far as WYSIWYG programs it is a nice
model.
For those unfamiliar with it, it builds a file of pointers to your
original documents. These documents can be in WP, Word, PostScript
and lots of other things -- including plain ASCII with some ASCII
sequences to represent font changes and paragraph tags. Basically a
lot like what troff or TeX source is like.
The cool thing is that you can modify these documents in their
original form with the tool you chose (such as vi) and the layout will
change. Or you can make changes in Ventura and it will update the WP,
Word or ASCII files. Sort of the best of both worlds. For working on
a document with multiple authors who may use different word processing
tools this is extremely nice and an alternative to telling everyone
they need to run FrameMaker or Quark or whatever.
-- Phil Hughes - FYL - 8315 Lk City Wy NE - Suite 207 - Seattle, WA 98115 Phone: 206-526-2919 x74 Fax: 526-0803 E-mail: fyl@fylz.com or nwnexus!fylz!fyl