RE: Text processor

[Nathan Clemons <nathan windsofstorm net>]

I definitively have to agree. I've never heard of NoteTab before; when
under windows, I use Word 97 for my fictional writing, and FTPEdit for my
coding, since it supports syntax highlighting.

Under Linux, I've used NEdit (also used it under SunOS and Solaris) and
it's decent. I prefer GVim, which is the beta version of Vim in
development. It has been perfectly stable for me and looks very nice when
using the GTK widget set. Yes, you do have to hand-compile and install
this, at least until they dont consider it to be beta. At that point
someone could come along and make an RPM for it. Most people do not make
beta software into an RPM.

I don't think, however, that you can (and perhaps this is the wrong term)
"blame" Linux for lack of an editor that does what you are looking for.
Linux has a wide range of editors, sometimes surpassing what commercial
Unices there are (Solaris, etc.). And if NoteTab is what you use, I know
it doesn't come with Windows, so couldn't you therefor blame Windows
equally? Personally, if I were you, I'd drop an email to the NoteTab
people and ask if they have ever considered porting their software to a
Unix environment.

Linux is still fairly "new" when it comes to public attention. The amount
of software not create by Microsoft for Windows is a large volume of
software that has acquired over time, and kept up to date. Let's face it,
Linux wasnt in the public eye until the last year or so, and Win 3.1 was
out how long ago? People then just kept updating the software to work with
95, NT, etc. as they were released.

Now Linux is in the public eye. Attention is being gathered, and many
large and small companies are starting to contribute, with commercial and
open-source software. There will be a lot of custom software released in
the next year or two. Now is the time, with the development of things like
the Linux Standards Base, to ask people to re-consider porting to Unix.

--Nathan.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nathan P. Clemons                       "Peace favor your code."
nathan@windsofstorm.net                 ICQ: 2810688
IN CONSTRUCTION:                        http://gnome.windsofstorm.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Fri, 18 Jun 1999 jason@whizzird.net wrote:

> this is blashphemy to mention on this list but i hear good things about
> K-office. it requires kde, which requires qt, which is not gpl, so most of us
> will avoid it, but if you want wysiwyg try it.
> 
> also check out www.linuxberg.com and the x11 software/office apps section.
> they've got several there. 
> but to be really cool, you should do all such editing with vi (or emacs
> depending on your religious beliefs) in TeX format.
> point and click editors like wordpad are easy to learn, and have some useful
> tools, but level out quickly, while a good editor like emacs or vi (swiched
> order to please the emacs lovers) will be harder to learn but give you more
> power down the road.
> and with both you can write macros to do _anything_ word count, tag stripping,
> case conversion.
> also you are dead wrong about vi (can't speak for pico, never used it) compared
> to dos edit (expect many heated replies). vi is hard to learn but it can do a
> _hell_ of a lot more than any dos editor. (except maybe the dos vi port :>
> ). and there's always gui-vim, all the functionality (i think) plus some
> very customizable point & click functionality.
> 
> On 19-Jun-99 Robin Miller scribbled:
> > Okay, I got Gnome running. Now I need to be able to *work*
> > with it. I write, like words, for a living, mostly online,
> > and so far I haven't found a single Linux text processor
> > that has the features I need, which are:
> > 
> > 1) Mousable Win/Mac-type interface
> > 
> > 2) Ability to strip SGML and HTML tags from imported text (a
> > la quotes from e-mail and Web sites)
> > 
> > 3) Ability to strip in basic HTML tags; links, <P>, <I>,
> > etc.
> > 
> > 4) Character Conversion; UC to lc, lc or UC to Capitalized,
> > etc.
> > 
> > 5) Able to write and save in ASCII, Word, and RTF.
> > 
> > 6) A WORD COUNT FEATURE! NO PROFESSIONAL WRITER CAN LIVE
> > WITHOUT ONE!!!
> > 
> > GXedit comes fairly close, but it crashes more than Win98
> > running three copies of Netscape on a 486, and the word
> > count feature doesn't count words accurately. It is a toy,
> > not a professional tool.
> > 
> > Pico and Vi are no better than DOSEDIT -- and harder to use.
> > If I wanted to use DOSEDIT I could have stuck with an 8086
> > that took about 0.5 seconds to boot. :)  
> > 
> > I haven't tried TED yet, but plan to shortly. WordPerfect
> > and StarOffice are too locked-in on paper-oriented formats
> > and eat a whole screen. Reporters and others who do online
> > research need to work around open browser windows. We're not
> > secretaries or novelists. We research and write at the same
> > time, usually at high speed, because we have DEADLINES!!!
> > 
> > The world's best text editor for modern writers whose work
> > either appears online or is submitted to dead-tree
> > publications by modem is NoteTab. Its home page is
> > http://www.notetab.com.
> > 
> > I think one reason so many reporters write negative articles
> > about Linux is that there is no way they can actually use
> > Linux in their work. I'm sitting here running Linux,
> > downloading information about Linux, and writing about Linux
> > -- mostly in Windows, using NoteTab. (Through VMware)
> > 
> > There are dozens of usable Windows text editors for writers.
> > It would be nice to have one for Linux. (Nedit is the
> > closest I've found so far...)
> > 
> > I can promise any developer who comes up with a usable,
> > non-crashing text/HTML editor for Linux at least a little
> > bit of fame and fortune. My sites aren't as popular as
> > slasdot, but a good word from me can overload most ftp
> > servers. :)
> > 
> > -- Robin Miller
> > Editor and Columnist
> > Andover News Network
> > http://www.andovernews.com
> > http://www.techsightings.com
> > http://www.davecentral.com
> > 
> > -- plus freelancing for all kinds of magazines and
> > newspapers.
> > (You have probably read things I wrote and didn't know it.)
> > 
> > 
> > -- 
> >         FAQ: Frequently-Asked Questions at http://www.gnome.org/gnomefaq
> >          To unsubscribe: mail gnome-list-request@gnome.org with 
> >                        "unsubscribe" as the Subject.
> 
> ----------------------------------
> E-Mail: jason@whizzird.net
> Date: 18-Jun-99
> Time: 22:27:09
> gtkICQ: 41540388
> 
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