logical/mathematical characters for PCs (114)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Mon, 9 Jan 89 19:24:12 EST


Humanist Mailing List, Vol. 2, No. 486. Monday, 9 Jan 1989.

Date: Mon, 09 Jan 89 14:26:46 EST
From: Ronnie de Sousa <SOUSA@vm.epas.utoronto.ca>
Subject: logical/mathematical characters for PCs



Several people kindly replied to my query about logical symbols
ON IBM PCS (ESPECIALLY USING NOTABENE). HERE IS A DIGEST OF REPLIES,
with occasional quotations, and addresses of senders in brackets.
Since there were so many replies to my specific problem, I have
not included recommendations for such packages as Lotus
Manuscript or LATEX, which don't give you WYSIWYG ON THE SCREEN,
though they do allow you to print those. In my experience, you
get used to those, but why bother if you don't have to?

The key to the answer seems to be the Hercules Graphics Card PLUS
recommended by several people: "NB interfaces extremely well with
the card, and you can easily design any special characters you
want with it. It can handle up to 3,000 characters or more. But
it it offers no solution to the problem of printing them out. For
that, you might look at a program called FONTMAX (ISS, 3463
State St., Suite 283 Santa Barbara, CA 93105; 805-964-9671.) [Ron
Zweig <H27@TAUNIVM>]; Stan Beeler <USERSTAN@UALTAMTS.BITNET>, has
written a character generator for printers that works with the
Hercules card; Sterling Bjorndahl Claremont, California BJORNDAS
CLARGRAD, gives a qualified endorsement for Turbofonts "a TSR
package that works with nearly all MS-DOS word processors and
printers. It requires an EGA, VGA, or Hercules Plus card, or one
of their special print PROMs if you don't have graphics. List
price is $US220 for Turbofonts with Laser printer support.
Turbofonts is available from Image Processing Software, Inc P.O.
Box 5016 Madison, Wisconsin 53705 Phone them at 601-233-5033 for
a brochure."

"Another excellent, but less flexible program is ChiWrite, a $120
(US) scientific and mathematical wordprocessor. ChiWrite comes
in a basic version with add-on modules for foreign-languages, 24-
pind laser printer support, and Hercules or EGA video support.
For about $140 (US) you can have a fully configured program which
will even write Hebrew right to left on screen. It is available
from Paraclete Software, 1000 E. 14th St., Suite 187, Plano,
Texas 75074". [Ian M. Richmond, Department of French, University
of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7. 519-661-
2163 Ext 5703 also IMR@UWOVAX.BITNET] Harry Gaylore
<GALIARD@HGRRUG5.BITNET> also recommends Chi-writer.

JEK%NBS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (JOHN E. KOONTZ, NBS 714
(BOULDER), 303-497-5180/FTS 320-5180) RECOMMEND T3 (TCUBED) AND
write: "It runs in graphics mode to get good screen characters.
It has nice menus and a nice logical organization, but a rather
inferior text editing facility, reminiscent of WordMARC. It
doesn't do much with logical organization of text, but does
support footnotes, etc. It was initially designed to run under
early DOS, and doesn't pay much attention to paths and
SUBDIRECTORIES. LIKE NB OF TWO EDITIONS BACK IT DOES ALL THAT
for you. T3 includes extensive facilities for designing new
characters for the screen and printer, and for integrating them
in alphabets and keyboards. In short, T3 has both good and bad
points.

One major competitor is called Techwriter. Its handling of the
mathematical symbols is about comparable to T3. I don't know
much about the rest of it.

T3 and Techwriter let you type equations by keying each symbol in
its appropriate place. Exotic symbols are entered with macros.
In T3 the name of the macro happens to be the name of the TeX
character, though the manual doesn't mention this. The import of
this is that you do your own layout. On the other hand, Lotus
Manuscript and Ventura Desktop Publisher both have equation modes
based on typing and editing the equations in with a metalanguage
reminscent of TeX. The results are displayed and printed as
equations, with the package doing the layout.

There is also an add-on package by Technical Support Software of
Brookline, MA. It works with various word processors, but I
don't know about XyWrite/Nota Bene. Apart from the blurb in my
files, I have some literature, but it is in circulation, and I
can't lay my hands on it at the moment. I believe it works
somewhat like Manuscript. The phone number of the company is
(617) 734-4160."

I (RDS) SHD ADD THAT T3 FILES ARE COMPLETELY UNDREADABLE BY
DOS, WHICH CAN SOMETIMES BE A DRAG. ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES OF
NB IS THAT IS PRODUCES CLEAN ASCII FILES.

Bill Winder (416) 960-9793 WINDER@UTOREPAS reports seeing an ad
in Byte magazine for Math Cad, by MathSoft. Should get anything
you want on the screen. (Check the advertiser index in any recent
Byte.)
Others also mentioned TEX or TECH specialized mathematics
software, as well as one called EXP, ($120) Wadsworth & Brooks-
Cole, 511 Forest Lodge Rd., Pacific Grove, CA 93950, said by Jed
Buchwald to be superior to T3. These are complete packages, as I
understand it, rather than ones that work with other text
processors.

HOPING THIS MIGHT BE OF HELP TO SOMEONE ELSE, MANY THANKS
TO ALL CONTRIBUTORS OF THIS INFORMATION.

Ronnie de Sousa
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
TORONTO, ONT., CANADA M5S 1A1
TEL: 416-923-6987 (H) 978-6789(O)