Hi listers, My experience with linux is mostly browsing with LYNX and e-mail with PINE. And some EMACS, nothing complicated. I know that the info and man pages are the place to start for documentation and I have been using them for years, now. But, this text-processing animal is all new to me. Like I say, I generally use PICO to edit (I never learned VI, because I tend to like things that are somewhat intuitive and that explain themselves as I go along like Pine and Pico do.) Q. Is there a command status line feature or function key feature in VI? How do I turn it on? You know, like the command status lines in PICO and PINE? Q. From your experience, which text-processing packages should I start with. I need to do basic documentation. Maybe a table of contents, indices, etc. Are LaTex and stuff like that for printing, like desktop publishing or for reading. I type "latex" and I get this mysterious blank line on my braille display. So, obviously there is a scripting language of some sort that I need to learn. Right? Q. the sgmltools package is a conversion package. Right? Q. Do I necessarily need to learn postscript and in a nutshell what does it do for me? Why would I want to learn it? Q. I guess what I am asking is this. If I wanted to do lots of research on the internet and then compose reports and documentation for publication and do this all in linux, what tools besides LYNX PICO and PINE should I learn? Any thoughts from authors and writers out there? And how do you communicate your documentations or writings back to sighted people who might be interested without having to get into MS Windows and MS Word to do a file convertion to .doc format for them? Thanks for the pointers. Sorry I am so long-winded. It's getting late. But, my goal is to make linux more useful to myself and others without always having to revert back to DOS and WordPerfect 6.0 or Windows and MS Word whenever I need to communicate with the sighted world. Interested in hearing from authors and writers who do everything in linux from research on the net to finished product ready to be sent to a publisher, all in linux with a linux toolbox set. How exciting, never to use Windows again. Wow, what fun! Thanks, again. -- Bill Gaughan wgaughan@snet.net