INFO-UNIX Digest V8#015 [Re: a word-processor for UNIX]

[cherry.STCWR at xerox.com]

According to a conference on Electronic Publishing held in Florida a while
back, the MacIntosh is the most popular document creation tool in the
industry.  Unix is just recently becomming used in the general market place
rather than in Universities and Govermnent facilities.  TeX, Interleaf,
Frame and other word-processors are available for Unix but they were not
available ten years ago.  Many of my customers use the above mentioned
word-processors but, they also continue to use their Macs.  PCs are not as
popular as the Mac.  According to the conference, Macs hold almost 50% of
the Electronic Publishing market.  

There are word-processors available under VMS (XPS-701, &c.) but, they are
also not wide spread.  This is also true for word-processors for the IBM
market place.

I may be spoiled because I have had access to WYSIWYG document creation
tools here at Xerox for at least 10 years.  The old tools ran on a
processor called an Alto.  Later we had Dorados, Dolphins, D0s, and then
the Star processors.  These also supported the Interlisp environment and
the TEdit document creator.  One problem with the Xerox tools is that they
don't talk to PostScript printers.  The old Alto sytstem printed on Pinguin
(sp) press printers and the newer word-processors talk in Interpress for
Xerox printers.

I am sure that with the growing interest in Postscript and the growing
interest in a variety of Unix workstations (Sun, Apollo (now owned by HP),
Dec, &c.) that we will soon see more and more of these high level WYSIWYG
document creation tools.  As usual, I also expect that we will see a high
level of incompatibility among the various document formats.  The ability
for Interleaf to read and process, with visual fidelity, a TEdit document
is highly unlikely.  The industry does not seem to be interested in
standards or the ability to coexist with other document creation tools.

Just as with PostScript, there are over 50 variants of this PDL currently
on the market.  Just because a WYSIWYG document creation tool can output
PostScript doesn't mean that your printer may print that document.  

Add to this the different formats for bitmaps and pixel arrays for
graphics, vector graphics, graphic languages, &c. and you have a vary large
problem.  I expect that you will see more and more document and PDL
conversion tools on the market to join with the new offerings for document
creation tools.

The fact that there does not appear to be a version of Word-Star for Unix
isn't the real problem.  The real problem is that there does not exist a
standard for document creation across different platforms and operating
environments.  

Bob Cherry
Systems Consultant
Office Systems Integration
Xerox Corpooration

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