On Tuesday, May 28, 2002, at 08:57 , Peter Clark wrote: > On Tuesday 28 May 2002 20:17, Kevin Bullock wrote: >> Second example: creating a professional-quality document. I'll leave >> Word out of this discussion because the only way to create a >> professional-quality document in Word is to beat your head against it >> for a really long time. Instead, consider LaTeX vs. InDesign. Which is >> easier? Having worked extensively with both, I can tell you, InDesign >> is. (Also a lot more expensive. I keep toying with the idea of >> writing a >> free (GUI) page layout program that uses TeX for a backend.) > Have you considered contributing to LyX? I have never played with > InDesign, > but so far, LyX is as close as you can come to a Free GUI for LaTeX. Of > course, it is not strictly a "page layout" program since it's WYMIWYG. > Actually, one of my gripes with LyX is that any time you want to so > something > just a little bit different, you need to resort to LaTeX commands, but > the > developers are working at making LyX support more LaTeX packages out of > the > box. > :Peter I've played with LyX a fair amount. It's useful for what it does, even if it is klunky and doesn't behave like any other app in existence. What I've considered writing would be significantly different, and I don't know pure TeX well enough to know if it would actually be possible. Instead of a document formatting program, it would be an actual page layout program, meaning you draw text boxes to put text in and position them on the page, then worry about formatting styles from there. Also a lot more flexible than what LaTeX or LyX do. The main reasons I've never looked into this any further are (a) TeX is a big, nasty thing to try and learn enough to do useful things and (b) I got InDesign at an educational discount :) <flamebait who-cares="no clue"> XForms does indeed suck, GPL'ed or no. The open source/free software community should band together to kill it once and for all. :) </flamebait> Pacem in terris / Mir / Shanti / Salaam / Heiwa Kevin R. Bullock