From: jhallen@world.std.com (Joseph H Allen) Subject: Re: A Better WordProcessor Idea Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 03:24:52 GMT
In article <1993May20.203607.25834@leland.Stanford.EDU> yseeley@leland.Stanford.EDU (Yonik Christopher Seeley) writes:
>In article <1tgnl1INNcre@uwm.edu> rick@ee.uwm.edu (Rick Miller) writes:
>>Hey, folks! There's nothing 'magical' about DOS's wordprocessors. Some
>>(like WordPerfect-5.0) have already been ported to UNIX platforms and are
>>being sold commercially. Let's just do what is *always* done... CLONE IT!
> WP for DOS is the defacto standard only if you restrict yourself to
>a DOS environment. I tried Word for Windows and WP5.1 was promptly
>removed from my HD. I hear that WP for Windows and Lotus Ami Pro, among
>others, are all very good. This is what my ideal word processor for
>Linux would look like.
> Something like what you describe (WP5.1) would also be very
>useful and have it's place. Something like this would probably be much
>more suited to using vgalib and would not require a full X install, and
>it could be used on almost any terminal that supported rudimentary
>cursor positioning (without preview function of course).
Yeah it would be way cool if an easy freeware wordprocessor existed for
linux/unix. I've been thinking of doing that after my editor JOE is
"finished". There's two ideas I have. Either: 1) something like the
original wordstar- I.E., an editor which works nicely on normal text
terminals and which doesn't really have 'preview' (I.E., it hides attribute
change sequences, but shows the text with the current attributes on the
screen. Plus it shows where the current page-breaks are). You'd want a
'printcap' database to give the printer's characteristics. I might just be
able to make this as an extension to JOE. 2) An X-based wordprocessor (I
don't know what vgalib is, but X is really the only portable graphics
standard out there). You'd want the output to be postscript. My only
question about this is about fonts. Do free, scallable, portable fonts
exist for X? When I last did X programming it was my impression that the
fonts were all bitmaps.
So... comrades... which of you are going to make professional quality
spreadsheet, database, accounting system, desktop publisher and drawing
program so that the free-software revolution can really happen? :-)
--
/* jhallen@world.std.com (192.74.137.5) */ /* Joseph H. Allen */
int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--;)q=3&(r=time(0)
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]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817;)printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}