🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <731@othervax.UUCP> ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn) writes:
>Tex, and the current UNIX tools for typeset text preparation, are
>rapidly becoming dinosaurs - they probably have already become so.
>Visible typography commands embedded in text, and separate H & J/page
>makeup runs are passe

BALONEY. There is a place in the world for WYSIWYG systems that do not use
embedded commands, but there is a large class of documents that 
cannot be done at all well with the kind of interactive system that you are
talking about. Anything where the structure is as important as the content.
Cookbooks like the @i[Joy of Cooking]. Encyclopedias. Airline schedules.
Dictionaries. Reference manuals for computer software.

Interactive systems are just fine for small documents, and for documents
whose appearance is extremely important with respect to their content. They
are not OK for large documents.

Whether or not interactive systems will EVER be ok for this kind of material
is an open research topic. My own belief is that it is possible to build an
interactive system that does not throw away all of the extra capability that
the batch systems give you right now.  However, as long as the interactive
text formatting programs are being programmed by people who think that
interactive systems are inherently better, there is no danger of them
becoming better.
-- 
	Brian Reid	decwrl!glacier!reid
	Stanford	reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA