From: jerry@cs.mcgill.ca (Gerald (Jerry) KUCH)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why my Amiga is gone
Date: 14 Dec 92 00:50:15 GMT
Organization: SOCS - McGill University, Montreal, Canada

In article <Bz2DtC.8AC@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>>I'd like to make one thing clear and be very  blunt about it. Word on either
>>the PC, Windows PC, Mac, or WordPerfect (with its equation editor) are virtuallyuseless for technical typing. I mean useless. You won't find one serious
>>science department on earth that uses them.
>
>What feature is it that you believe Word *2.0* is missing as far as
>technical writing goes?  I've used it for formatting literally hundreds
>of equations and find it fantastic.  Perhaps I'm not picky, but they
>always come out exactly as I would write them by hand.

That's weird... is the goal of computerized mathematical typesetting the
production of equations that look like they were done by hand?

You're probably not as picky.  Most people, once they've been inducted into
the TeX world end up becoming really discriminating about typesetting and
are driven crazy by poor font choices, lousy layout, and lack of full
ligatures, kerning, etc.  And for math, I still think that somebody familiar
with TeX is definitely going to outrun someone using the Word Equation editor.
On top of that, the printed output of the word equation editor just doesn't
thrill me with its quality... I'd rather read a textbook typeset in TeX than
something produced with Word...

Still, we're comparing apples and oranges.  Word is a general purpose word
processing package, and an amazingly full-featured one at that.  TeX is a
fairly specialized typesetting language designed for the production of
books that contain a lot of mathematics.

>>I can't take it anymore with people rattling on about Word or WordPerfect
>>being suitable for mathematical typing. It wouldn't be so annoying were you,
>>and others, to mention EXP, PC TeX, MathWriter Pro, chi-Writer, Scientific
>
>I have used chi-writer and prefer Word.

I don't think Philip was trying to say that the other packages were the
epitome of mathematical typesetting, or even that they were close.  His 
point was likely that they are attempts at specialized mathematical writing
tools, however ill-conceived and poorly executed they might be.

>>It won't be too long before the Amiga has a general word processor that
>>its users will be happy with. There's more to computing than word processing
>>and spreadsheets. It's beeen 20 years and little has changed. 
>
>Twenty years?  Perhaps I've been accelerating at close to the speed of
>light, but it seems like the "computer revolution" started in 1981.

Why did the computer revolution start in 1981?  What milestone event occurred
in that year that clearly divided that which came before from that which we
have now?

One could just as easily argue that the microcomputer revolution started in
1976 with the Apple ][, or earlier...

>WordProcessing became a major application considerably later then that.

Patently wrong.  Word processing was a big application in the depressing 
days of big clunky CP/M boxes that predated 1981 by at least a couple of
years.  Remember WordStar?

>It hasn't been that long that computer printer output is appreciably
>better then typewriter text.  And we are just now expanding the bounds

There has always been computer printer output appreciably better than
typewriter text...  affordable maybe not.  Near letter quality printers
that gave typewriters a good run for their money started appearing
in 1984 or so.

>of general DTP on a PC.  Many magazines are still typest and many
>people still hire people to do their resumes.  Wordprocessing/dtp are
>by know means at a technological dead end.

True.  TV Guide for instance is typeset using a macro package for TeX.
A large number of scientific journals are now making TeX their standard
language for technical submissions.  Textbook publishers have flocked to
it as well.

>>Communications, information, sound, graphics, pattern recognition, data
>>analysis, etc...but word processing, please...
>
>All of these are software...the biggest hardware base gets the best
>software.  Even if wordprocessing stopped existing, whatever would be
>the *NEXT* most popular application will be advanced the most on the
>system that gives it the best market.

No.  Sound, graphics, pattern recognition and communications are not "all"
necessarily software.  Your other point stands, but this first statement is
ill-conceived.


-- 
 Jerry Kuch (jerry@cs.mcgill.ca) | Wishing I were an emaciated chihuahua. 
 "I was wrong to play God.  Life is precious, not a thing to be toyed with.
  Now take out that brain and flush it down the toilet."
                  --- M. Burns  "Treehouse of Horror II"
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc