From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people Newsgroups: fa.editor-p Title: Commercial Wordprocessors Article-I.D.: ucb.1361 Posted: Tue Jun 15 02:37:13 1982 Received: Wed Jun 16 03:55:39 1982 >From Mishkin@YALE Tue Jun 15 02:32:07 1982 I recently had the experience of helping someone (my father) with no knowledge of wordprocessing look at and evaluate wordprocessing systems for a small/moderate size law office. I saw a Wang and an IBM product. What struck me is how crotchety they looked, what with (gasp!) "modes", random embedded hieroglyphic symbols (end-of-line, tabs) and as-you-go page breaks (which conveniently you can make an automatic post-pass to get to in reasonable places). Are they all really this bad? None of the company representatives seemed to understand the concept of "document compiler" (e.g. Scribe, Runoff) and raw text and finished output. Is this fairly pitiful "what you see is what you get" style really all there is? Are we-all using editors that poor secretaries could never use (don't tell me about how your department secretaries use zippy editor X because; they also have zippy hacker Y always near by)? Do these commercial systems have advantages I just didn't recognize? -------