🚀 go-pugleaf

tlm@nextasy.physics.mcmaster.ca (Tom Marchioro) writes:
>While there are many possibilities, you might also want to consider
>TeX, which is *free* (in the sense that it's bundled) and is capable of 
>making virtually any kind of table, including fancy rules, equations, 
>mixed entries, a wide range of fonts, etc. etc.  

Yes, TeX would be a good answer to my problems if only it's power and
cross-platform re-useability came with a GUI.  Unfortunately, I don't
have the time to learn another programming language, yet I still have
the need to be able to graphicly manipulate everything I do.  A
GUI-oriented DTP seems to be the only solution for me.

I hear it's quite capable of doing anything, which is good, but I wish
that it's power wasn't dependant upon one learning a language.  I know
that there are GUI previewers and debuggers (similar to Yap, except
for TeX and not Postscript), but what I need is 100% GUI, no new
language learning needed.

>The basic rule of TeX is that making the *first* table is hard, but after
>that they're all pretty easy as you just recopy the same format.

This is how I wish so many GUI DTP programs would be, even Frame can't
make a format out of the kind of tables I need.  Tables where the whole
thing isn't a checkerboard of some height and width seems to be beyond
Frame's ability.  Something like this would be a piece of cake for TeX,
I'm sure, but for Frame...well...no:

  |------------------------------------------|
  | XXXXXXXXXXXXXX |                         |
  |----------------|                         |
  | YYYYYYYYYYYYYY |                         |
  | YYYYYYYYYYYYYY |                         |
  |-----------------------------------------------------------|
  |             Q               Q                Q            |
  |-----------------------------------------------------------|
  |                             H                             |
  |-----------------------------------------------------------|

X = shading of 13% of a color (13% refers to luminance) background
Y = pure white background
Q = vertical borders that are exactly 1/4 of the way between the left
and right edges of the table.  No matter how much this table row is
sized, these vertical borders are always at a fixed relative position.
H = same as Q, but this is halfway between the left and right borders
on the same row.

>Hope this is Helpful 

Thank you for responding, but by no fault of yours, TeX is not for me.
-- 
-- Jeff (jeffo@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu)
-- No NeXTmail please