Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing

[roy at phri.UUCP]

	If you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have said to
go ahead and teach your business-types how to deal with unix.  I've spent
the past 5 or so years running unix systems (used at least 50% for word
processing) in a place where only a few people know anything about
computers.  Yes, we've gotten secretaries who can barely deal with
automatic teller machines to learn enough emacs (and before that, ed!) and
nroff and neqn to get their stuff done.

	Was it worth it?  I'm not sure.  Most of the people have learned
most of what they know by rote, and can't deal with any variations.  Right
now (no kidding) I can hear two people in the next room: "what's this EQ
and EN stuff?"

	We do scientific writing here -- that means lots of eqn stuff,
tables using tbl, and references using bib.  I don't honestly know of any
other system that would suit our needs, and we've looked at a lot of
systems.  So far, Interleaf seems the best competition, but we can't touch
the price tag.

	Over the past year or two, I've come to realize that I've probably
been more gung-ho about unix that it deserves.  Don't get me wrong, for a
programming environment, I wouldn't pick anything but unix.  For high
quality technical publishing, with properly trained users, I'd probably
still go with unix (we've just ordered TeX, which I expect to be an
improvement over troff, but still not a panacea).  But for a lot of the
routine stuff that gets done around here like business letters and memos,
unix is just too much overkill, and too much stuff to learn.  If it wasn't
for the fact that these secretaries had to learn troff anyway to deal with
scientific manuscripts, I would say we'd be better off with something like
MacWrite or WordStar or whatever on some sort of PC.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016