*BSD News Article 17559


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From: pd@doc.ic.ac.uk (Philip Daniels)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.apps
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG Tools & other stuff
Date: 27 Jun 1993 15:45:47 +0100
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
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Distribution: world
Message-ID: <20kbqrINNa7l@oak41.doc.ic.ac.uk>
References: <20c2ic$k8h@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk> <20ih1vINN5s9@harpo.uccs.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: oak41.doc.ic.ac.uk

In article <20ih1vINN5s9@harpo.uccs.edu> jmward@elbert.uccs.edu (Joel M. Ward) writes:
>Lee Essen (lessen@axion.bt.co.uk) wrote:
>: Does anyone know of any WYSIWYG word processors/Drawing tools for Net/386BSD
>: (and XFree86), I currently have to resort to Word for Windows for this and
>: I'de rather leave my machine booted Unix.
>
>: I know about idraw (which is ok-ish), but are there any others?

  I use xfig on my Linux machine rather than idraw, simply because it's a lot
faster (I presume it doesn't use FP) except when drawing arcs. You can export
drawings in a format suitable for inclusion in laTeX documents. I expect it
will compile Ok for BSD too.

  Incidentally, I have just gone through the process of writing up my final
year project using AMI Pro, an experience which has convinced me that learning
TeX will be more than worthwhile. The more I find out about the Unix tools
the more I like them.

>	Just out of curiosity, would there be a market for commercial NetBSD
>386bsd applications?  Like, big fancy ones like full-fledged word processors
>and spreadsheets and databases and the like. 

  Possibly. Warner Losh of ParcPlace has ported ObjectBuilder to Linux and
is (or was, I just mailed off a request today in hope) giving out free (!) 
copies. So along with Motif that makes, to my knowledge, 2 commercial 
applications for Linux. Maybe if you talk nicely to those guys they will do a 
386BSD port too. I hope we see more and more free apps for both the free 
Unices, though I don't expect to see the Unix versions of WP etc ported soon. 
I think the best hope would lie in targeting niche markets, such as those for 
symbolic maths packages. I _want_ Mathemetica!

  As for horizontal applications there is always WABI :-) 


-- 

 - Phil.	(pd@doc.ic.ac.uk)

Brain failure (cerebral coretex dumped)