[SunRescue] Should an editor require you to think?

[Christopher Byrne]

No, document processing involves layout, word processing doesnt. BTW, I'm
using Donald Knuth's definitions here. According to him (he wrote TeX, he
should know ;-) there are three primary functions here

1. Word processing covers the basic entry of text, and the saving of files
etc... basic editor functions
2. text processing is the handling and manipulation of text (fonts and
faces, pagination, paragraph properties)
3. document processing is the layout of pages for printing or viewing
(typesetting or DTP)

In that sense, any text editor can be used for word processing. Packges like
TeX, LaTeX, troff, groff, nroff, are used to do the other two. IN the
windows sense word processing actually combines some of all three


Chris Byrne

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of Ken Hansen
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 18:21
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [SunRescue] Should an editor require you to think?


Word processing involves page-layout issues, how/why would an editor handle
that processing natively?

Why would you want it to?

(Sorry, showing my 'vi' preference)

Ken
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joshua D. Boyd" <jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu>
To: <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 8:30 PM
Subject: Re: [SunRescue] Should an editor require you to think?


> On 7 Mar 2001, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
>
> > On 06 Mar 2001 22:15:02 -0800, Chris Byrne wrote:
> > > When it comes to writing, the culture in the united states has nearly
totally
> > > absorbed the concept of typing on a screen as a "natural" thing. Most
people
> > > in our culture feel comfortable with natural stream of consciousness
writing
> > > in a word processor.
> >
> > None of Vi, Pico, or Emacs are Word Processors the way that term is
> > generally used.  They are, in the case of the first two, strictly text
> > editors.  The Emacs Operating Environment is not just a text editor, but
> > it doesn't have a worthwhile word processor (amateur desktop publishing
> > is more acurate).  For editing config files, any of these editors is
> > just fine, but for writing things like a resume, or a report for school,
> > they're really not the right tool for the job.
>
> I agree that Pico isn't suited towards wordprocessing.  I'd say the same
> about vi, but that would anger people needless.  But emacs is great word
> processing.  It sports tight integration with aspell (or ispell, take your
> choice), style, diction, and things like latex.  I've used emacs for quite
> a number of school reports with graphs and tables and letters.  The key is
> to keep in mind that just doing wordprocessing doesn't require full blown
> DTP features like Word offers.  In most cases, such features are a
> hinderence.  For my resume, I used emacs (for the HTML version), a program
> called DiscResume (it's awefull, but a job database used it), and
> Microsoft Publisher (a real DTP program).  I've never taken the time to
> learn latex well enough to do things like resume's in it, but then, latex
> was made for documents (the longer the better), not design work.
>
> And where I come from, there are other people who use VI combined with the
> above mentioned accessories for word processing.
>
>
> --
> Joshua Boyd
>
>
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