Good Wordprocessor for NeXTStep Intel
sch...@tamu.edu
On 10/19/95, Daniel J. Gamble wrote:
>In article <460n6o$k...@fnnews.fnal.gov> br...@d0tokensun.fnal.gov (Time
>will fly.. tonight...) writes:
>> Subject pretty much says it all. I'd like something that is not dog
>slow,
>> doesn't have many bugs :), and contains most of the functionality of MS
>Word
>> or Wordperfect.
>>
>> Thanks..
>>
>> -- John
>
>WriteUp by AFS is a good general purpose wp. It'll even import those MS
>Word and WordPerfect documents.
ditto here. I have been very pleased with the newest version of WriteUp1.21. It has great
features, great user interface and is generally really cool. And AFS is very responsive if you
have any problems at all with the app! But, as has been mentioned here many times, it does
not yet support footnotes. This should be corrected in the not to far future I believe.
HP
--
Hanspeter Schaub
Ph.D. Graduate Research Assistant
Aerospace Engineering Department
Texas A&M University
http://http.tamu.edu:8000/~schaub
sch...@tamu.edu (NeXTmail welcome)
We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! WE CAN LEARN TO FLY!
-Jonathon Livingston Seagull
Garance A Drosehn
> Subject pretty much says it all. I'd like something that is not
> dog slow, doesn't have many bugs :), and contains most of the
> functionality of MS Word or Wordperfect.
I'm happy with the latest version of WriteUp. Happier than I
am with the latest version of MS-Word on the Mac, for sure.
On the other hand, I'm sure there's some features that MS-Word
has (and WriteUp doesn't), so it really depends on the specific
features you need.
---
Garance Alistair Drosehn = g...@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
John Kheit
what the people that make Tiffany2 did with their filters. Have
a mini-browser/shelf for the styles for the text. So now, in
WriteUp, instead of having that little paragraph styles window,
have a browser/shelf with styles arranged in the hierarchy.
We could have these levels for styles in the browser:
Book->Cover, Title Page, Index, TOA, TOC
Chapter
Section
Page->left, right, odd, even...
Column
Paragraph
Character
Tokens->Page#, Date, etc.
We could then add our custom styles in these 'directories' in the
browser, and have the most common ones on our shelf. Hey, and when
4.0 comes around maybe we can even have these things hangin around
on the WM shelf?
Just a thought...
--
Thanks, take care, later, John Kheit )^> %^)
monoChrome, Inc. | New York Law School
NEXTSTEP Developer | Opinions expressed represent me only...
Telepathy, It's coming | MIME & NeXTmail OK--PPP (3P)
jkh...@cnj.digex.net | http://cnj.digex.net/~jkheit
enigma
On 18 Oct 1995, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> Time will fly.. tonight... <br...@d0tokensun.fnal.gov> wrote:
> > Subject pretty much says it all. I'd like something that is not dog slow,
> > doesn't have many bugs :), and contains most of the functionality of MS Word
> > or Wordperfect.
>
> Another choice costs more money and is out of date, but available on NS:
> FrameMaker. But if you're going to spend that much money on an app, it
Adding on to OpenWrite, WriteUp, and FrameMaker, you can also consider
WebPages (Used to be Pages--which I loved--but ITS killed the word
procssing Design Models and made it a webpage authoring program, but it
still has two Word Processing design models--one for presentation, other
for basic word processing [not very good]), PasteUp (which I currently
use--It's pretty good--a bit harder to use, because it's a page layout
program rather than a word processor), and WriteStep (don't know whether
it still exist).
Chuck Swiger
enigma <ll...@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> Adding on to OpenWrite, WriteUp, and FrameMaker, you can also consider
> WebPages (Used to be Pages--which I loved--but ITS killed the word
> procssing Design Models and made it a webpage authoring program, but it
> still has two Word Processing design models--one for presentation, other
> for basic word processing [not very good]),
ITS didn't kill Pages.
ITS was working with Pages to develop an HTML-specific design model that
could be used for the creation of WWW pages. Pages unfortunately went out
of business. ITS, because we had an interest in the HTML design model,
agreed to take over Pages (the product), and convert it into WebPages. So
Pages customers at the least have someone to talk to about the product,
instead of having it completely unsupported.
I haven't worked very much with Pages/WebPages myself, so I'm not familiar
with its current status. However, I think that you can still get all of
the design models that we have. (I'll check on Monday.) Or you can bounce
email to "in...@its.com" if you'd like....
-Chuck
--
Charles Swiger -- ch...@its.com | Information Technology Solutions, Inc.
--------------------------------+---------------------------------------
CrashCatcher Development, Systems and Networking Administrator
J.B. Nicholson-Owens
> Adding on to OpenWrite, WriteUp, and FrameMaker, you can also consider
I was considering this program for a while, but when it came out it was
really disappointing. Without total control over the design models, I
couldn't justify the cost of the app. I didn't see things in that app that
I couldn't do in Frame, and since Frame has a more widely-used file format
(and with that comes a larger userbase) and more control over the document,
I recommended Frame (with reservations about the version). To me, if you
need more control than what Frame provides (or if you want good-looking
equations instead of the crap Frame produces), check out TeX.
> PasteUp (which I currently use--It's pretty good--a bit harder to use,
> because it's a page layout program rather than a word processor)
If this app had some long and regular DTP functionality, it could be good.
As-is, however, I can't justify the cost. I check out WriteUp and PasteUp
to see if features including tables and variables have been added, but
perhaps it's just not meant to be.
> and WriteStep (don't know whether it still exist).
I think I remember seeing this app in the back of a NeXTWORLD magazine, but
that was it. From the screenshot, it looked like it had keys for the stuff
you can do with the text object, which (if true) would mean a real feature
deficiency for word processing users. I'd like to try it if it's out.
I agree that these things are available, but virtually all of the NS word
processing/DTP market leaves so much to be desired, I believe it's cheaper
in the long run to switch platforms and buy something more mainstream or use
TeX (available on most any platform).
John Kheit
> ITS was working with Pages to develop an HTML-specific design
> model that could be used for the creation of WWW pages. Pages
> unfortunately went out of business. ITS, because we had an
> interest in the HTML design model, agreed to take over Pages (the
> product), and convert it into WebPages. So Pages customers at
> the least have someone to talk to about the product, instead of
> having it completely unsupported.
And I'm really happy that someone got it because it is a very
promising product. I'd like to know if there are any development
plans to spruce-up WebPages to give it some, IMO, sorely need
features?
1) To make separate webpages, I need to make a new document for
each. It would be great if I could define web page breaks and
WebPages would be able to save multiple html files into a single
directory. It is a real drag when my web site has say 100 different
pages to go, to have to open 100 documents, rather than having 1
website document with 100 page breaks...
1b) It would be useful to save multiple webpages in a single
directory, because then the documents and web servers can take
advantage of performance enhancements like not needing to load up
the same graphic twice. e.g. if I have a boarder I use on every
one of my many webpages on my website, currently WebPages makes
multiple copies of that same element through out all of the
documents... It would be neeto if WebPages would be smart enough
to make these optimizations automatically.
2) WebPage XFormat to GIF converter is not the best I've seen.
The results when using nice 24bit color images are sometimes
grainy... It would be nice to be able to choose what/how you want
particular images rendered. e.g. So maybe I want most things
rendered to a gif format, some lame images might be specifically
tagged to render as high lossy/high compression jpeg formats, while
really important images might be tagged to render as low lossy/low
compression jpeg formats...
3) The tables are great, but now that tables are supported in 'text'
mode, and update to accommodate its use.
4) Support for color text, backgrounds, and background images.
Or maybe these are functions that are already possible and I'm just
ignorant of how to accomplish them? If these are possible, please
let me know how!
Overall, the product is great... It saves a great deal of time,
and I've barely had to go into and edit the html's. But it really
could use some polish--especially on the multi-webpage/performance
front. I hope this product isn't forgotten and allowed to die.
I bought it after the ITS webObject 'scandal.' So there certainly
should be a market for it...
--
Thanks, take care, later, John Kheit )^> %^) =^)
Garance A Drosehn
> Adding on to OpenWrite, WriteUp, and FrameMaker, you can also
> consider WebPages (Used to be Pages--which I loved--but ITS killed
> the word procssing Design Models and made it a webpage authoring
> program, but it still has two Word Processing design models--one
> for presentation, other for basic word processing [not very
> good]), ...
Pages (the company) came out with the Web design models while they
were still the developer. ITS didn't "kill" anything. ITS did
not turn Pages into WebPages (Pages, the company, did that).
Pages (the company) was leaving NeXTSTEP development for "new product
development" (so they said), and ITS bought up the products that
ITS was interested in. If it wasn't for that interest from ITS,
it's not clear that there would be any support at all for either
WebPages or Pages -- which really are still just one product.
I don't know what ITS's plans are with WebPages, but certainly
I'm fairly interested in it. I own a copy of Pages/WebPages,
and liked the idea.
Note that the "ITS" that's in my signature is a completely different
company than the "IT Solutions" being talked about in this context...
I'm in the Information Technology Services part of RPI (a college).
So my only interest is as an owner of the Pages product.
Garance A Drosehn
> ch...@its.com (Chuck Swiger) wrote:
> > ITS was working with Pages to develop an HTML-specific design
> > model that could be used for the creation of WWW pages. Pages
> > unfortunately went out of business. ITS, because we had an
> > interest in the HTML design model, agreed to take over Pages
> > (the product), and convert it into WebPages.
> And I'm really happy that someone got it because it is a very
> promising product. I'd like to know if there are any development
> plans to spruce-up WebPages to give it some, IMO, sorely need
> features?
I'd be interested in future plans too...
> 1) To make separate webpages, I need to make a new document for
> each. It would be great if I could define web page breaks
> and WebPages would be able to save multiple html files into
> a single directory.
I would expect that separate html files deserve separate documents.
> 1b) It would be useful to save multiple webpages in a single
> directory, because then the documents and web servers can
> take advantage of performance enhancements like not needing
> to load up the same graphic twice.
Hmm. Certainly this would be a good thing to do.
> 2) WebPage XFormat to GIF converter is not the best I've seen.
> The results when using nice 24bit color images are sometimes
> grainy... It would be nice to be able to choose what/how you
> want particular images rendered.
As PNG support becomes available, I'd much rather have all images
go into that instead of GIF.
> 3) The tables are great, but now that tables are supported in
> 'text' mode, and update to accommodate its use.
Well, let's wait on this until the shipping versions of some
NeXTSTEP Web browsers also support tables!!
> 4) Support for color text, backgrounds, and background images.
>
> Or maybe these are functions that are already possible and
> I'm just ignorant of how to accomplish them? If these are
> possible, please let me know how!
I wouldn't know how to get WebPages to do these things either.
It'd be nice to see these things supported.
> Overall, the product is great... It saves a great deal of time,
> and I've barely had to go into and edit the html's. But it really
> could use some polish--especially on the multi-webpage/performance
> front.
The last time I worked with WebPages a lot, I had several other
suggestions. I don't remember what they are now, but I have some
web pages I should be creating sometime soon, so I may stumble
over the same wishes.
I think it's a good application that could be quite useful with
some additional work. I'd *think* that there would be enough of
a market for it (given all the Web interest, and products like
WebRex and WebObjects coming from the NeXTSTEP platform). But
obviously I have no way of really knowing...