🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3918@dogie.macc.wisc.edu> yahnke@vms.macc.wisc.edu (Ross Yahnke, MACC) writes:
>In article <1990Jun28.204508.18882@ariel.unm.edu>, wilcox@hydra.unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox ED.FOUND) writes...
>-I am currently a MS Word user, but I am considering switching to
>-Nisus (or at least using both word processors). Certain features of

I use Nisus and MS Word on the Mac and vi under Unix extensively. I agree with 
your evaluation of Nisus vs Word, except that I find that shortcomings in 
the present release of Nisus (2.03; a new release advertised as removing them
is due real soon now) have caused me to gravitate back to Word for serious
writing, reserving Nisus for only those cases where I really have to have
regular expression string searches (cleaning up downloaded text, for example
stock prices and the like).

However this whole experience trying to find a capable word processor in Macland
has been a real disappointment, compared to text processing under Unix/vi/troff,
which I used for my first book, lousy user interface and all.

When I bought a Mac for my second book, I bought Microsoft Word 3.0 sight
unseen, figuring that the makers of a top of the line word processor would
have their poop in a group such that I wouldn't have to screw around with bugs
and missing features. Wrong on both counts. The bugs in Word 3.0 were far
worse than anything I've ever dealt with under unix, and I continue to be 
plagued with Word 4.0's abysmal page layout logic with respect to pagination 
of footnotes and embedded figures. And I was totally blind sided by the
one thing that I never expected, Word's (and most other Mac utilities, 
excepting MPW) amateurish conception of what search and replace is all about.

For all of its flaws, vi does have its priorities straight on that one (and
presumably emacs too, although I rarely use it). Even Nisus does not really
up to serious use.

Probably the thing I miss the most is the absence of anything corresponding 
to the g/re/x command, which allows one to search (g) for a regular expression
(re) and then apply any command (x) to the lines that match. 

I shudder to think of how "the rest of us" are replacing repeated spaces
with tabs in order to load stock prices and the like into spreadsheets.

-- 

Brad Cox; cox@stepstone.com; CI$ 71230,647; 203 426 1875
The Stepstone Corporation; 75 Glen Road; Sandy Hook CT 06482

Although I generally agree with the comments about search and replace for 
most personal computer word processors, in article <5309@stpstn.UUCP> 
cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox) writes:
> I shudder to think of how "the rest of us" are replacing repeated spaces
> with tabs in order to load stock prices and the like into spreadsheets.

This is really not much of a problem in MS Word, just select the stock 
price columns and change whitespace (^w) with tabs (^t).  This use of 
special "^" characters is, however, about the only thing that Word's 
search and replace does that is not strictly vanilla.

By the way, someone really needs to come up with a better model than even 
the Unix-ish regular expression.  I have a hell of a time explaining this 
stuff to someone who has successfully avoiding ex/vi/grep arcana.

---- Michael Teener -- 408-974-3521 ---------------------------------+
---- Internet teener@apple.com, AppleLink TEENER                     |
---- Apple may know my opinions, but *I* am responsible for them     |
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Transportation by Cheetah N9900U, a loyal beast for the past 7 years.

In article <8964@goofy.Apple.COM> teener@apple.com (Michael Teener) writes:
>By the way, someone really needs to come up with a better model than even 
>the Unix-ish regular expression.  I have a hell of a time explaining this 
>stuff to someone who has successfully avoiding ex/vi/grep arcana.

Finding a good interface for regular expressions is damn tough.  In
designing Nisus the single biggest user interface issue we weren't able
to resolve was how to make Nisus' superset of grep available without
overloading ASCII characters.  Our solution, grafting a menu system
onto some regular expressions, was better than the competition's but 
still disappointing.

For those of you who haven't used Nisus, replacing all occurences of
one or more spaces with tabs would involve choosing three item from
menus.  They then appear in the dialog as

  Find:         || Space || << 1 or more occurences ||
  Replace With: || Tab ||

If anyone has a seen a better solution (no untried ideas, please; prototype 
it up before posting) I'd love to hear about it.

Grobbins           grobbins@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov

Disclaimer: no connection with Paragon Concepts.  Anymore.  And to give
credit where it's due, the primary designer of Nisus' Find/Replace was
Michael Ogawa.  Free demo copies of Nisus are available by calling
619-481-1477.  Void where prohibited by taste.  Do not remove under penalty

In <2684@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> grobbins@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov (Grobbins (IDM)) writes:

>In article <8964@goofy.Apple.COM> teener@apple.com (Michael Teener) writes:
>>By the way, someone really needs to come up with a better model than even 
>>the Unix-ish regular expression.  I have a hell of a time explaining this 
>>stuff to someone who has successfully avoiding ex/vi/grep arcana.

[stuff deleted]

>For those of you who haven't used Nisus, replacing all occurences of
>one or more spaces with tabs would involve choosing three item from
>menus.  They then appear in the dialog as

>  Find:         || Space || << 1 or more occurences ||
>  Replace With: || Tab ||

>If anyone has a seen a better solution (no untried ideas, please; prototype 
>it up before posting) I'd love to hear about it.

I believe the last time I saw Nisus at a Mac show, they had adopted an idea
that I'm sure many others had suggested (including myself) to replace the
double vertical bars separating the 'Space' and '<< 1 or more occurances'
above with a box around the whole 'meta character'. Instead of a confusing
series of characters, some of which are '|'s, one sees a series of boxes
with things written in them-much clearer. As drawn below:

------- -------------------------
|Space| |<< 1 or more occurances|
------- -------------------------

only on the mac this would show up as a good box. I suggested shadowed rounded
rects, so as not to look like a pop-up (although that could be another idea)
but to give the appearance of blocks.

-- 
===================================================================
Rich Akerboom        Internet, etc.:   boomer@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
Sylvan Software      UUCP:             decvax!dartvax!eleazar!boomer
P. O. Box 566        Telephone:        (802) 649-2238
Norwich, VT  05055  USA
--
===================================================================
Rich Akerboom        Internet, etc.:   boomer@eleazar.dartmouth.edu
Sylvan Software      UUCP:             decvax!dartvax!eleazar!boomer
P. O. Box 566        Telephone:        (802) 649-2238