-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Shane, There are "front ends" to TeX that simplify things somewhat, such as latex and amstex. The latter is used by mathematicians, and the American Mathematical Society (hence AMS-tex) has made it the official tool for authors. No doubt that WP is easier for many things, but that convenience comes at the cost, as you point out, of keeping a Windows box around just for that purpose. It also comes at the cost of locking your source documents into a proprietary format that requires others to obtain a compatible processor to work with your files. Chuck On Fri, 19 Mar 2004, Shane Wegner wrote: > On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 07:57:55PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote: > > Lots of folks seem to be missing Word Perfect 5.1 pretty badly. I was > > going to say they seem to pine for it, but that would be too bad!!! > > --- snip --- > > One of the only remaining reasons I continue to have a > Windows box is word processing. You mention xml but afaik, > xml doesn't know anything about fonts, emphasis, or even > paragraphs. In order to get all that, you have to write in > a format like DocBook where you have to put everything > inside <para tags. That and pressing ctrl-b is a lot > easier than writing <emphasis>my text here</emphasis>. Oh > and not to forget <itemisedlist> for bullets etc. > > I'm no xml expert but doesn't changing fonts and sizes > involve writing stylesheets for the document in question. > Maybe tex simplifies all this, I have never looked at it > but imo, word processing still has its place and I haven't > come across a good console app yet. > > S > > - -- The Moon is New In a world without Fences or Walls no one needs Windows or Gates. My home page is now at http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iQCVAwUBQFwhPDVdG8M9x9tGAQIlCwQAvDFXIdVNTn1QlSvSrlVKYluhTBXMfUCl kNz/0Bkh/P9O/O7kKmZPpGAxrH9d7GFph1cF7fJy8wVbxBKsK7eVlEwl5nytkRrZ c+WHEtboP3sjoJ6WowAprfbgxPIfri2CaMpAbqpy0XlmBLYJau5dW9r2ISu0IdS/ K3U/uWtp4/Y= =Z8q/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----