Subject: Re: A Better WordProcessor Idea From: physadm@phys.canterbury.ac.nz (Andrew McGregor, rm ,ext ) Date: Mon, 24 May 1993 22:05:03 GMT
In article 93May23232715@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu, davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu ("John E. Davis") writes:
>In article <C7IFDD.509@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz> physadm@phys.canterbury.ac.nz
>(Andrew McGregor, rm ,ext ) writes:
> Moral: the learning curve for LaTeX, emacs and unix in general can be
> drastically shortened. But, you HAVE to have X to do this.
>
>
>You are probably right but you have to be careful. I do all my
>``wordprocessing'' using LaTeX and nothing else. It usually lokks like this:
>
>\documentstyle[12pt]{article}
>\begin{document}
>Lots of text here with {\em some} font changes
>and maybe
>\section{A section}
>or
>\section{Two}
>This type of document is trivial and the learning curve is
>almost nil.
>\end{document}
>
>At the same time, I use LaTeX for complex, often multi-line mathematical
>equations. I suspect your physics students fall in this category. Again, TeX
>and LaTeX are unbeatable in this domain.
Mostly they do fall in this category.
>
>However, often I want to format complex tables or simply modify my resume.
>This is such a pain to do in *TeX. My resume is full of parboxes, hfills,
>vspaces, etc... It looks very ugly. I have used the newcommand function but
>it still looks ugly. It gets very old fast running tex on the document
>followed by viewing the dvifile. In my opinion, WYSIWYG really shines here.
>My point is that I think you would come to a different conclusion if you gave
>your students a series of tables to format--- especially if the tables were
>such that they had to use boxes, etc...
>#___/John E. Davis\_________________________________________________________
>#
># internet: davis@amy.tch.harvard.edu
># bitnet: davis@ohstpy
># office: 617-735-6746
>#
A wysiwig front end (that worked) to the *TeX table formatters would be
regarded as a godsend by anybody who has ever tried them!
That is one thing that needs very much to be done. We haven't done it,
simply because nobody had the expertise or the time when this stuff was
being set up. When a version of emacs that can draw this kind of thing
turns up, I'll have a go at the cell formatting bit (which is, after
all, the hard part)