From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:editor-people Newsgroups: fa.editor-p Title: Re: Commercial Wordprocessors Article-I.D.: ucb.1392 Posted: Sun Jun 20 00:28:35 1982 Received: Mon Jun 21 05:18:55 1982 Reply-To: ople >From POURNE@MIT-MC Sun Jun 20 00:25:39 1982 From: Nathaniel MishkinSubject: Commercial Wordprocessors Do these commercial systems have advantages I just didn't recognize? They do not have many advantages you didn't notice; but what you saw was NOT the best class of small system editors available. The best small system editors store text as a stream and format it as you desire; they will show you "what you get" on the screen first if you ask for it, but you certainly need not print only what you will have. Do understand that most small systems have fairly limited printers; only a few can do true proportional spacing, although most will do about 48 motions to the inch. This tends to limit the fanciness of the printout. Date: 15 June 1982 23:25 edt From: Frankston.SoftArts at MIT-MULTICS THe thing to realize about commericial word processors is that they assume that the operator is trained on them and works full time using them. I guess I do not understand what a "commercial word processor" is. I know that my Congressional friends got a Lexisoft system, which they DO NOT assume will be used full time; indeed the thing is shared among many staffers. It was originally intended that the secretariy use it exclusively until the staff officers discovered how much easier it was to write papers on it than on typers. I am no great fan of the lexisoft software compared to some others such as WRITE, but it does seem popular with them. Is "word processor" to be taken as "dedicated word processor" ie a crippled computer that doesn't know it can do anything else?