🚀 go-pugleaf

anwar+@cs.cmu.edu (Anwar Mohammed) writes:
: 
: I have absolutely no doubt that Equation Builder would be better.  However,
: I'd like to see a review posted.  Anyone?
: 
I'd like to see this as well  It's not so clear to me that EqB is better
than Frame unless you use EqB in conjunction with TeX (that is, for making
technical journal quality publications). EqB still has major problems with
"in line" math for reasons Phil McDunnough has  recently discussed
(this may be fixed someday, but it depends on the developers of the word
processing software).  Simple in-line math can be done using the basic
aspects of the Symbol font and, say, the elementary features in WriteNow,
but something so basic as a varaible with both a superscript and a subscript
is out.

My experiences with Frame are not significant enough to make an 
intelligent comparison, but after playing with the Demo for a few days
when I first got my NeXT, I'd say (loosely) that the front end isn't
nearly as friendly as EqB (and is downright perverse at times) and it
doesn't (to my memory) interface as easily with other applications the 
way EqB does.


There may be a **third** alternative to consider here as well.  There is a
new program called Scientific Word which runs on  PC's. It's basically a 
WYSIWYG front end to LaTeX.  A coworker runs it on a  486 notebook and we've
been extremely pleased with it.  He has this paranoia about TeX, but is
comfortable with SW, but we can still exchange documents because I just
process them under LaTeX, make changes, and give it back to him (the only
problem being stripping and then restoring the #$%*&%^*%^#$@  ^Ms which
DOS uses:-)  It seems possible that this would run on the NeXT under 
SoftPC.  I'll try to find the time to test this out in the next day or
so and will report back.  

SWord comes with's own version of LaTeX for the PC, which is "okay" but
not great.  On the NeXT you could just use it as a front end for the (1)
free and (2) fantastic NeXT LaTeX.  Will try it out soon!

Tom