[SunRescue] Should an editor require you to think?

[Ken Hansen]

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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