4 ms·

I'm a big command line fan, but vi/emac/nano are not word processors. They're text editors. You might be able to get close if you are using them to edit Markdo

I'm a big command line fan, but vi/emac/nano are not word processors. They're text editors. You might be able to get close if you are using them to edit Markdown and running it through Pandoc (especially if you add in a non-commandline PDF viewer). But still. WordPerfect 5.1 - now that was a curses/command line word processor :) I don't know of a modern equivalent though.

sharyanto 13y ago
Also, vi/emacs/nano are not one would call "command-line" text editors (they are text-mode/console-based though). See "ed" for one.
dfc 13y ago
What is your definition of "word processor"? Emacs + auctex? Emacs + orgmode? Words are text. Do you feel better if section headings are bigger and take up more space than the text you are supposed to be working on: latex: https://i.stack.imgur.com/etFst.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/etFst.png org-mode: http://blog.nozav.org/public/images/tangotango_org.png http://blog.nozav.org/public/images/tangotango_org.png org-mode with pd preview: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/lsYdK0C2RvQ/maxresdefault.jpg http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/lsYdK0C2RvQ/maxresdefault.jpg Or is emacs excluded from being a word processor because you can also use it for powerpoint presentations: http://salomie.ro/tudor/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/orgmode_presentation.jpg http://salomie.ro/tudor/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/orgmode_p...
- russellallen 13y ago
  Well Emacs can almost but not quite be everything of course. But this is a pretty common distinction, surely? Words are text, but word processors have historically been focused on preparing documents for printing (or nowdays viewing a visual representation of a printed document onscreen, eg PDF). They handle differing visual layout (fonts, page breaks, margins, indenting). They are softwrapped and paragraph based not line based. Often they deal with formatting through styles - headers, bullet points, numbering. They usually handle inclusion of tables, images and other non-text elements. The most common example of a word processor, Word, also handles collaborative writing with tracked changes and notes, and has inbuilt features such as on the fly word count, spelling and grammar checks. As I said, for a command line word processor look at WordPerfect for DOS or equivalent. What you are saying (and it is not entirely wrong) is that you can approximate a word processor by matching a text editor with a bunch of other programs (TeX, Pandoc, aspell etc). But that doesn't make the text editor a word processor.
  - dfc 13y ago
    The unstated distinction you are making is between a program a novice can use for word processing and a program that requires some level of experience. I will grant that ed/edlin/nano are not word processors. But excluding emacs from the category is just as absurd as including ed. Have you used emacs in the past decade? Some of your requirements are laughable. Softwrapping? visual-line-mode has been baked in since 23. Word count? wordcountmode. Tables? I will take orgtbl mode over the libreoffice/ms-word interface any day. Bullet points? Nothing comes close to orgmode for manipulating/moving/adding bullet points. Apple's Pages did not get "track changes" until 2012. Was it just a text editor prior to that? Sidebar: It is kind of funny that you like WP 5.1 and are a lawyer. Were you ever a lawyer in the states? The only people I have ever heard gush over WP5.1 were lawyers. I never realized the fetish was global.
    - russellallen 13y ago
      No, I'm not making that distinction. I'm just saying that text editors and word processors have historically and up to this day been somewhat different beasts written for different audiences with different focuses on their features. Sure, I can do emacs with softwrapping to write my next legal contract. I can also do text editing in Word for my next LaTex document. But I wouldn't want to. This is not an obscure distinction to make. Sidebar: Actually I much prefer a recent Word to WordPerfect 5.1. But the question was command line tools, and WordPerfect 5.1 is a good example of a terminal based document creation tool focused on creating, well, documents. It should be easily possible to make a modern equivalent - a terminal based editor focused narrowly on the creation of the same sorts of documents Word is good at. But I don't know of one, and a tricked out emacs doesn't really get there.
    - brudgers 13y ago
      WordPerfect was great because it was essentially a text editor with a markup language. When formatting wasn't coming out quite right it could be debugged easily with by pressing the key to "reveal codes". The other thing that made WordPerfect great was their technical support. Free and unlimited over the phone...and they new what they were talking about and if it was a genuine bug, they would have an engineer call you back on their dime. Or at least that's what happened when I found a bug in Summer of 1992. Microsoft Word buries its formatting. Sometimes it's easier to just nuke a file to text and reformat the whole thing than to try to solve conflicting formats overlapping.
- abdullahkhalids 13y ago
  The crucial distinction between a word processor and a text editor is that the word processor hides the formatting instructions from the user, and instead displays formatted text. Text editors display text in all it's glory. Nothing is hidden.
gaius 13y ago
Wordstar before then. It's a real shame that it is still legally encumbered, I'd love to use it on a modern system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordstar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordstar I actually found the other day I have a ROM for Wordwise+, the first word processor I ever used, for the BBC Micro. I might see if I can get away with doing some "real work" in it :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordwise
- js2 13y ago
  Had a Microsoft Z-80 card in my Apple ][ just to run CP/M just to run Wordstar. Once AppleWorks came out, never booted to CP/M again. Also, ImageWriter and Epson MX100. :-)
cturner 13y ago
Many people would role their eyes at the idea of using a chain of console tools for document production, think of it as contrived. But it's not such a fancy idea. One of the first things to work on unix was roff, an ancestor of the man page system. It processed text documents into a printable form. Most serious document production company (publishing companies and newspapers; legal firms are probably less sophisticated) have a similar pipeline within their firm. Text (raw or rigidly styled), version-controlled, running through a pipeline of reviews and signoffs and markup and arrangement. > I don't know of a modern equivalent I don't think monolithic word processors will be a feature of the future. The mainstream tool will be some kind of style editor. Maybe it'll incorporate a spellcheck and some other monolithic features. There'll be a pipeline underneath - to send things to paper or web or archive or accounts. We'll think much more in terms of snippets of styled data, and its lifecycle. We'll laugh at memories of these laborious monolithic word processing systems, and how we thought that this was productivity.
- npsimons 13y ago
  The mainstream tool will be some kind of style editor. Maybe it'll incorporate a spellcheck and some other monolithic features. There'll be a pipeline underneath - to send things to paper or web or archive or accounts. LyX is already (mostly) there: http://lyx.org http://lyx.org While it's mostly LaTeX based, I could easily see it using any number of backends (another feature of pipelining underneath), such as markdown, roff, etc.

sharyanto 13y ago

Also, vi/emacs/nano are not one would call "command-line" text editors (they are text-mode/console-based though). See "ed" for one.

dfc 13y ago

What is your definition of "word processor"? Emacs + auctex? Emacs + orgmode? Words are text. Do you feel better if section headings are bigger and take up more space than the text you are supposed to be working on: latex: https://i.stack.imgur.com/etFst.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/etFst.png org-mode: http://blog.nozav.org/public/images/tangotango_org.png http://blog.nozav.org/public/images/tangotango_org.png org-mode with pd preview: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/lsYdK0C2RvQ/maxresdefault.jpg http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/lsYdK0C2RvQ/maxresdefault.jpg Or is emacs excluded from being a word processor because you can also use it for powerpoint presentations: http://salomie.ro/tudor/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/orgmode_presentation.jpg http://salomie.ro/tudor/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/orgmode_p...

russellallen 13y ago
Well Emacs can almost but not quite be everything of course. But this is a pretty common distinction, surely? Words are text, but word processors have historically been focused on preparing documents for printing (or nowdays viewing a visual representation of a printed document onscreen, eg PDF). They handle differing visual layout (fonts, page breaks, margins, indenting). They are softwrapped and paragraph based not line based. Often they deal with formatting through styles - headers, bullet points, numbering. They usually handle inclusion of tables, images and other non-text elements. The most common example of a word processor, Word, also handles collaborative writing with tracked changes and notes, and has inbuilt features such as on the fly word count, spelling and grammar checks. As I said, for a command line word processor look at WordPerfect for DOS or equivalent. What you are saying (and it is not entirely wrong) is that you can approximate a word processor by matching a text editor with a bunch of other programs (TeX, Pandoc, aspell etc). But that doesn't make the text editor a word processor.
- dfc 13y ago
  The unstated distinction you are making is between a program a novice can use for word processing and a program that requires some level of experience. I will grant that ed/edlin/nano are not word processors. But excluding emacs from the category is just as absurd as including ed. Have you used emacs in the past decade? Some of your requirements are laughable. Softwrapping? visual-line-mode has been baked in since 23. Word count? wordcountmode. Tables? I will take orgtbl mode over the libreoffice/ms-word interface any day. Bullet points? Nothing comes close to orgmode for manipulating/moving/adding bullet points. Apple's Pages did not get "track changes" until 2012. Was it just a text editor prior to that? Sidebar: It is kind of funny that you like WP 5.1 and are a lawyer. Were you ever a lawyer in the states? The only people I have ever heard gush over WP5.1 were lawyers. I never realized the fetish was global.
  - russellallen 13y ago
    No, I'm not making that distinction. I'm just saying that text editors and word processors have historically and up to this day been somewhat different beasts written for different audiences with different focuses on their features. Sure, I can do emacs with softwrapping to write my next legal contract. I can also do text editing in Word for my next LaTex document. But I wouldn't want to. This is not an obscure distinction to make. Sidebar: Actually I much prefer a recent Word to WordPerfect 5.1. But the question was command line tools, and WordPerfect 5.1 is a good example of a terminal based document creation tool focused on creating, well, documents. It should be easily possible to make a modern equivalent - a terminal based editor focused narrowly on the creation of the same sorts of documents Word is good at. But I don't know of one, and a tricked out emacs doesn't really get there.
  - brudgers 13y ago
    WordPerfect was great because it was essentially a text editor with a markup language. When formatting wasn't coming out quite right it could be debugged easily with by pressing the key to "reveal codes". The other thing that made WordPerfect great was their technical support. Free and unlimited over the phone...and they new what they were talking about and if it was a genuine bug, they would have an engineer call you back on their dime. Or at least that's what happened when I found a bug in Summer of 1992. Microsoft Word buries its formatting. Sometimes it's easier to just nuke a file to text and reformat the whole thing than to try to solve conflicting formats overlapping.
abdullahkhalids 13y ago
The crucial distinction between a word processor and a text editor is that the word processor hides the formatting instructions from the user, and instead displays formatted text. Text editors display text in all it's glory. Nothing is hidden.

gaius 13y ago

Wordstar before then. It's a real shame that it is still legally encumbered, I'd love to use it on a modern system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordstar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordstar I actually found the other day I have a ROM for Wordwise+, the first word processor I ever used, for the BBC Micro. I might see if I can get away with doing some "real work" in it :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordwise

js2 13y ago
Had a Microsoft Z-80 card in my Apple ][ just to run CP/M just to run Wordstar. Once AppleWorks came out, never booted to CP/M again. Also, ImageWriter and Epson MX100. :-)

cturner 13y ago

Many people would role their eyes at the idea of using a chain of console tools for document production, think of it as contrived. But it's not such a fancy idea. One of the first things to work on unix was roff, an ancestor of the man page system. It processed text documents into a printable form. Most serious document production company (publishing companies and newspapers; legal firms are probably less sophisticated) have a similar pipeline within their firm. Text (raw or rigidly styled), version-controlled, running through a pipeline of reviews and signoffs and markup and arrangement. > I don't know of a modern equivalent I don't think monolithic word processors will be a feature of the future. The mainstream tool will be some kind of style editor. Maybe it'll incorporate a spellcheck and some other monolithic features. There'll be a pipeline underneath - to send things to paper or web or archive or accounts. We'll think much more in terms of snippets of styled data, and its lifecycle. We'll laugh at memories of these laborious monolithic word processing systems, and how we thought that this was productivity.

npsimons 13y ago
The mainstream tool will be some kind of style editor. Maybe it'll incorporate a spellcheck and some other monolithic features. There'll be a pipeline underneath - to send things to paper or web or archive or accounts. LyX is already (mostly) there: http://lyx.org http://lyx.org While it's mostly LaTeX based, I could easily see it using any number of backends (another feature of pipelining underneath), such as markdown, roff, etc.