| Fred Stluka on 19 Nov 2018 06:48:30 -0800 |
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| Re: [PLUG] Open Source Equivalent of WordPerfect |
Bhaskar, Always nice to trip across another old VAX RUNOFF and Unix roff/nroff/troff guy! Did you ever use IBM's Script tool? I used it at a summer internship at IBM in 1982. You'd write text, marked up with SGML markup tags to identify elements like chapters, sections, paragraphs, lists, tables, etc. Then you'd run the Script tool to render the formatted doc. It pulled rules on how to format each element from the cascading standard project-wide, department-wide and corporate-wide sets of Script macros and DTDs. So, we flunkies created content and our overlords decided how it would be formatted. Technically, I think we could have written our own personal Script macros and DTDs to override some/all of the formatting, but few of us knew how. A couple years later, I was using VAX RUNOFF and sorely missing the ability to specify the formatting. It was like using SGML with a single hardcoded set of Script formatting macros. Then roff/nroff/troff. Then WYSIWYG Interleaf that stored itself as markup. Then Word that was WYSIWYG-only, stored in a proprietary binary format. It just kept getting worse and worse! About 10 years later, in 1996, I started using HTML and it was like coming home. Finally, I could write docs in markup again! And could even specify the formatting separately in CSS and DTDs. Better yet, it was "deja vu all over again"! The HTML looked just like the old familiar SGML, complete with angle brackets and all. Nice! See:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language#Concrete_and_abstract_syntaxes
Happy Thanksgiving! --Fred ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred Stluka -- Bristle Software, Inc. -- http://bristle.com #DontBeATrump -- Make America Honorable Again! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 11/19/18 3:17 AM, K.S. Bhaskar wrote:
As one who has used markup languages including the original markup language (runoff / nroff / troff, pre-processed by eqn / neqn, tbl, and m4) all the way through HTML and DocBook XML to reStructured Text (e.g., https://gitlab.com/YottaDB/DB/YDBDoc/blob/master/MultiLangProgGuide/MultiLangProgGuide.rst), as well as WYSIWYG tools (going back to Word-11 on RSTS to LibreOffice including Interleaf and various editions of Microsoft Word), my opinion is that everything has its place.WYSIWYG tools are unbeatable for quick, short documents like resumes and business letters. Just get it done.Markup languages are great for large documents (whose size means that they are often maintained by multiple people over long periods of time) and where you want to separate the content from the presentation. We maintain all our user documentation using git (on GitLab, mirrored to GItHub). For example, the reStructured Multi-Language Programmers Guide above is published as a web page at https://docs.yottadb.com/MultiLangProgGuide/ and we can also generate PDFs and ePub should we want to.Regards – BhaskarOn Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 5:04 PM Fred Stluka <fred@bristle.com <mailto:fred@bristle.com>> wrote:Casey, JP has the right idea when he says: > I switched to markup languages and never looked back. My votes are: +1 for markup languages. +1 for tools that generate markup languages. The dominant markup language these days is HTML. And as JP says, there are other less wordy markup languages that generate it: Markdown, Asciidoc, etc. Working directly in a markup language is pretty easy. You simply mix the formatting commands in among the words of the document. Commands to start a new paragraph, change text font or color, center a line, insert an image, create a list or a list item, etc. I find it better than a WYSIWYG tool like Word, LibreOffice, WordPerfect, WordStar, Interleaf, etc. Those tools respond to keystrokes, menu clicks, etc. by doing things they think I want. But I sometimes find those actions and effects to be totally unexpected. And all too often I can't figure out how to prevent an effect that is now persisting for all or a portion of my doc. My favorite such tool was Interleaf (1990 or so, on Apollo Unix workstations) because it was a WYSIWYG tool that stored each doc as an ASCII file of markup, not in a binary format. I sometimes got frustrated with things like "Why is this line of text insisting on remaining centered, when I wanted it left- aligned?!??!". But, I could just open the markup file in any ASCII text editor (vi, emacs, etc.), scan or search for the relevant text, and notice that it was annotated with markup that used the word "center". Then, I could go back to the WYSIWYG tool, search the help files for that exact markup command, and learn how to undo it. Or could make a change in the WYSIWYG tool, then diff or view the markup file to see what changed, and figure it out myself. Or could simply delete that part of the markup to fix the problem, bypassing the WYSIWYG tool entirely. Furthermore, I could write shell scripts and small programs to process the text of the markup files, making consistent changes to all sections of a file, or to multiple files, rather than having to use the WYSIWYG tool to manually edit each occurrence. These days, if you're not comfortable directly editing HTML or even Markup or Asciidoc, there are lots of WYSIWYG tools out there to provide a simple point/click UI like you see in Word, WordPerfect and the others. See: - http://google.com/search?q=WYSIWYG+HTML+editor Also, many of the tools where you'll want to enter formatted text now accept some form of markup. Examples: Wikis, GitHub, BitBucket, Jira, etc. These days, I do ALL of my documents in HTML: my resume, my consulting contracts, invoices, design docs, etc. Such docs can be stored in a single file, backed up, printed, copied to a USB drive, etc. They can also easily be attached to an email, and pretty much all email clients can render them without the recipient even having to fire up a browser to view the attachment. Here are some samples of docs created in HTML: - My resume: http://bristle.com/~fred/resume.htm <http://bristle.com/%7Efred/resume.htm> - A typical invoice to a client on my company's HTML letterhead: http://bristle.com/Temp/2016_07_HHL.htm Note that you didn't have to install Word, LibreOffice, or even a PDF viewer to view those 2 docs. Any web browser or phone can open them. I only use LibreOffice to view/edit any non-HTML docs that other people send me, never for my own docs. I'm a HUGE fan of FOSS. But, I did a search for a WYSIWYG HTML editors a few years back. I specifically wanted one that would do these 3 things: 1. Allow me to create and edit docs without ever looking at HTML when my goal was to just pretend I was in Word or LibreOffice and whip up or edit a doc using entirely a WYSIWYG interface. 2. Offer a dual mode where I could see and edit the HTML directly watching the instantaneous effects it had on the rendered doc, and could also edit the rendered doc directly via the WYSIWYG interface, watching the instantaneous effects it had on the HTML markup. 3. Allow me to open a file of hand-crafted HTML from someone else, make a minor change via the WYSIWYG interface or by directly editing the HTML markup, and save the file WITHOUT having the entire file re-indented, word-wrapped, or in any other way reformatted. When I sent the edited file back to the author and he ran a diff tool, I wanted hm to see only the changes that I intended to make, no other noise. Unfortunately, the only tool I could find to meet all 3 criteria was Dreamweaver, which is proprietary, not FOSS. So, I bought it and have used it happily ever since. Are there better FOSS options by now? --Fred ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred Stluka -- Bristle Software, Inc. -- http://bristle.com #DontBeATrump -- Make America Honorable Again! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 11/17/18 11:37 AM, JP Vossen wrote: > On 11/17/18 10:33 AM, Casey Bralla wrote: >> Does anybody know if there is an open source equivalent to WordPerfect? >> All the word processing programs I have tried all seem to emulate MS >> Word, which I detest. I used to be able to make WP sing, but MS Word >> is a burden since it tries to outsmart me and anticipate what it thinks >> I want to do, instead of letting me do what I really want to do! >> >> I've been using LibreOffice, and it's adequate, but I was hoping for >> more. >> >> Anybody have any suggestions? > > I never liked WP, I used MultiMate, then WordStar, then various > versions of MS Word. I liked Word, and used correctly (which almost > no one does) it used to be not that bad. Unnecessary feature bloat > and the "ribbon" interface have rendered Word unusable, at least for > me. As noted, LibreOffice can be adequate, be even it is far > overcomplicated. I switched to markup languages and never looked back. > > Casey, what are your use cases? Would a wiki work? Mediawiki (powers > wikipedia) is great for all kinds of docs & notes, but it's wiki > markup is feeling very old and primitive to me these days. There are > a great many others, including some local/desktop lines like Zim. > (Zim is awesome.) > > Writing in Markdown or Asciidoc then rendering into HTML or PDF using > one of the tool chains might work. The tool chains can be a PITA to > get going, but once you have it working everything is effortless. > There are "static" wikis that work like that too, you have a Git > commit hook that renders, so a commit or push to the right place just > renders & publishes. > > Other random musings: > We wrote the first edition of the _Bash Cookbook_ in OpenOffice, and I > had to go to some contortions to handle code samples. Then O'Reilly > converted that into Word, then converted the Word into DocBook because > that's how their workstream was a the time (circa 2007). That was > very painful and introduced a lot of errors. > > We wrote the second edition in Asciidoc in Git (converted by O'Reilly > from the 1st DocBook, circa 2017). That was great. > > Every so often I look at the current markup languages and think about > Tex/LaTeX and WordStar "dot" commands and macros, and then think about > the cyclical nature of tech and IT... > > Later, > JP > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- > JP Vossen, CISSP | http://www.jpsdomain.org/ | http://bashcookbook.com/ > ___________________________________________________________________________ > > Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org > Announcements - > http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce > General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug