3 ms·

Amusingly there was a word processor called T3, which emulated the Selectric. The Alt button (if I recall correctly, since I used it for my thesis in 1993) swit

Amusingly there was a word processor called T3, which emulated the Selectric. The Alt button (if I recall correctly, since I used it for my thesis in 1993) switched to the Symbol type ball. Some combination of arrows moved the cursor up and down by a half line. There were macros for some big symbols like the integral and sum. After a bit of practice, it was remarkably quick for doing equations. It used its own font, that looked like a mono-spaced Times Roman.

Maxion 4y ago
It's kind of remarkable when you think about it that old typewrites from the 1960's gave more user friendly fine control over the document layout and symbols typed than modern word processing software. Sure LaTeX is a thing, but to call that user friendly is a nightmare. Word but as a Selectric emulator would be pretty interesting.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  That would suggest that fine control over character placement is not something users value that much.
  - analog31 4y ago
    It required a monospaced font to work, and the only thing you got was laying out characters on a 1 x 1/2 space grid. So it wasn't all that fine of control. There was no control over character size. Equations produced by LaTeX or MS Word looked a lot better. The manuscripts we produced were not journal-ready, though they were certainly thesis-committee-ready. The technology raised the standards, and today, people care about having beautiful manuscripts. The trend was already well on the way by the time I finished grad school. I was one of the few stragglers who didn't value the extra time spent on aesthetic perfection. The students who used LaTeX seemed to take longer to finish. The only advantage of T3 was speed. I was in a hurry to finish.
- vore 4y ago
  I think this is something very few people actually need to do, and you can still do it if you want to! But it makes sense that it's no longer a front and center feature.

Maxion 4y ago

It's kind of remarkable when you think about it that old typewrites from the 1960's gave more user friendly fine control over the document layout and symbols typed than modern word processing software. Sure LaTeX is a thing, but to call that user friendly is a nightmare. Word but as a Selectric emulator would be pretty interesting.

Gigachad 4y ago
That would suggest that fine control over character placement is not something users value that much.
- analog31 4y ago
  It required a monospaced font to work, and the only thing you got was laying out characters on a 1 x 1/2 space grid. So it wasn't all that fine of control. There was no control over character size. Equations produced by LaTeX or MS Word looked a lot better. The manuscripts we produced were not journal-ready, though they were certainly thesis-committee-ready. The technology raised the standards, and today, people care about having beautiful manuscripts. The trend was already well on the way by the time I finished grad school. I was one of the few stragglers who didn't value the extra time spent on aesthetic perfection. The students who used LaTeX seemed to take longer to finish. The only advantage of T3 was speed. I was in a hurry to finish.
vore 4y ago
I think this is something very few people actually need to do, and you can still do it if you want to! But it makes sense that it's no longer a front and center feature.