Caution - Religious post from an EMACS person :-) I use EMACS for text editing and developing programs. I also use it for editing HTML, since it has an HTML mode. EMACS is a language sensitive editor that works with most computer languages. While it does have word processing capabilities, I personally prefer a true word processor for that task. WRT:Star Office. While SO is now owned by Sun, wasn't it written in France by a French company, Star Division? I personally find Star Office cumbersome and limited, but it suits my needs. I also have MS Office under Crossover Office. On 16 Apr 2002 at 10:02, Brian Durant wrote:
On Tuesday 16 April 2002 07:59, Doug McGarrett wrote: - Why would any sane person try to learn emacs when there are so many simple - GUI word processors and even low level text editors that are easily accessable - available? An IT person might need emacs if there is no GUI on his system, - or even "edit" but for anybody else, just use a standard editor. - Just my 2c plain. (I suppose that emacs might do some print-ready - layout, if one were super sharp. But there are lots of other things - that do that, like StarOffice, for instance.)
Don't get me started on StarOffice ;-) I know I may make myself quite unpopular on the list, but seen from the viewpoint of an international user, StarOffice sucks big time. It unfortunately is a typical US centric product. While it does support a relatively large number of languages in the "deluxe" or whatever version, it is not available outside of the US. Only the "standard" whatsit version is.
As of yet, I don't believe (someone correct me if I am wrong - I haven't looked at SO since v. 5) that StarOffice supports bi-directional text processing (I don't need it, but there are a lot of people that do), nor do I believe that it supports the ability to write in Kanji, Cyrillic, Arabic; Hebrew (example) and English, Danish, French or whatever in the same document. There have also been people on the list complaining about footnote support problems as well.
Nisus Writer was what I used on the Mac and I have yet to meet its match.
Why would any sane person consider using emacs? If you read the thread, you would know that what I was ruminating about was that there were certain criteria that many people look for in office/text software and whether it is GUI or not isn't necessarily the first criteria:
1) How does XY stack up against MS Word/Office (.doc version support, .rtf support, und alles)? 2) Will support/development for XY vaporize? 3) How does XY bring me closer to cross-platform integration in my workplace? 4) Is XY GUI or command line? How steep is the learning curve?
If you have some suggestions that fit the above criteria and also has decent international capabilities, please enlighten myself and the rest of the list. Many people seem to be interested in this topic.
For a more general discussion on GUI versus command line, I would suggest the excellent book: "In the beginning... was the command line" by Neal Stephenson, author of "Cryptonomicon".
Cheers,
Brian
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