[Novalug] Replacement for abiword??

[Nino Pereira]

I beg to differ, jlg:
> Not to put too fine a point on it: TeX for a non technical user?!
> Sheesh, Emacs would be easier.  Maybe she'd like something easy and
> intuitive such as vi (which  I use) (Sarcasm implied).  My read of her
> reqs was that formatting was secondary to easy editing ("but only for
> plain text; ").
> 
I will admit that using TeX or LaTeX for a non-technical book may seem
overkill, but, the TeXs are not difficult once you have a template.
Again, admittedly, making a template is a little strange, and 
that the TeXs don't do WYSIWYG may confuse some.

I'm sure there are lots of templates, for all kinds of formatting, 
obtainable on the web, and if needed I'll be happy to supply one.
After that, it's really easy.

Nino
   
> There are a billion text editors out there - pull a couple down and
> try em out.
> 
And, you can use all of them with TeX and LaTeX.

> ...jlg
> 
> Nino Pereira <pereira at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>         Did anyone already suggest TeX for this purpose?
>         
>         >From what I read of this thread, TeX is perfect for
>         this purpose (and, if Donald Knuth, the developer of
>         TeX, is to be believed, it was originally desiged for
>         to make his wife's pamphlets more beautiful).
>         
>         Formatting is done through (admittedly somewhat arcane)
>         commands that you intersperse with text. The whole file
>         is in ASCII, so that you can edit it with your favorite
>         word processor (I use gedit when I have a full screen
>         available, pico or nano through ssh). Then, you convert
>         the ASCII input into a 'device independent file' with
>         print commands, or into a .pdf file.
>         
>         All science publishers accept TeX files, and many publishers
>         of non-science books should be able to also.
>         
>         HTH,
>         
>         Nino
>         
>         On Sun, 2007-01-21 at 08:24 -0800, Beartooth wrote:
>         > On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, gregory pryzby wrote:
>         > 
>         > > I am late to the thread and haven't read it all..
>         > >
>         > > why isn't vi or OpenOffice a good fit?
>         > 
>         > She needs a word processor, not just an editor -- one 
>         > that's lean, mean, and user-friendly -- but only for plain
>         text; 
>         > we looked at OpenOffice, and found it slow to launch, at
>         least 
>         > 9/10 bloat for our purposes, and far too complex to learn to
>         use.
>         > All (and I do mean all) she wants to do with it is write
>         plain 
>         > text (but formatted) books. What's more, they are to go, if
>         ever 
>         > accepted, to ordinary commercial publishers, who are likely
>         going 
>         > to require a copy in some never to be sufficiently accursed
>         M$ 
>         > format.
>         > 
>         > Abiword meets all those requirements, but the "support" 
>         > list, on which we necessarily depend, is a constant
>         irritation to 
>         > try to cope with. Hence I want a replacement, if there is
>         one.
>         > 
>         
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