*BSD News Article 88165


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From: tenser@spitfire.ecsel.psu.edu (Dan Cross)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: SALE!!SALE!!!
Date: 2 Feb 1997 13:37:42 -0500
Organization: Penn State ECSEL Computer Laboratory
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Message-ID: <5d2mtm$9sb@spitfire.ecsel.psu.edu>
References: <32ED8F7B.4F16@pacific.net.sg> <32f2eb42.2542545@news.earthlink.net> <hckohe4zeus.fsf@eto.ericsson.se> <5d0h2f$2u5@uriah.heep.sax.de>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34936

In article <5d0h2f$2u5@uriah.heep.sax.de>,
J Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote:
>I have yet to see one that you could also drop onto a secretary's
>computer.

ApplixWare?  WordPerfect?  Granted, they aren't free, but our
secretaries in the PSU mathematics department use them on their
Sun's with no complaints...  :-)  Besides, they like exmh much
better than Eudora.  :-)

>For me, using TeX or troff is fine.  I love the flexibility, and the
>nice output appearance.  For a secretary, you can't get away with vi
>or emacs or TeX or troff.  I don't say you need WISYWING (it's useless
>since the screen resolution is so much less than the printer
>resolution).

That is a correct general assumption, but some of our secretaries in
the PSU mathematics department also did mathematical typesetting in
LaTeX, quite successfully.  They too, enjoyed the flexibility and power.
As a general rule, troff was shunned as not having ``good enough''
output (hey, I'm not going to argue with a PhD mathematician about which
sigma looks better...they look the same to me.  :-).

While you are correct in the general case, there ARE alternatives for
UNIX which are powerful and easy to use.  I understand that RedHat got
with the Applix people to get them to port ApplixWare to Linux.  I've
wondered if it would run under Linux emulation on FreeBSD, but I have
not yet tried (basically since I've yet to see the RedHat version, only
for the SPARC, but it IS out there...).

	- Dan C.