RE: Equation Editor.

[Paul Topping <PaulT mathtype com>]

Martin,

So, let me recap. I wrote a long email saying how I hoped Gnome could do
better than MSWord and I included my views on how it could be made better.
Now, you take the opportunity to slam my product and say that you can do it
better than my company. What did I do to deserve this? If my attempt at a
marketplace reality check is too much for you, I think you'll have a real
hard time when you have to go up against Microsoft.

If you think TeX is so great, why bother implementing a word processor at
all? TeX creates beautiful documents. Just a thought.

Paul

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Sevior [mailto:msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au]
> Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 2:23 PM
> To: Paul Topping
> Subject: RE: Equation Editor.
> 
> On Sat, 2 Sep 2000, Paul Topping wrote:
> > 
> > I think support for the kind of interfaces and capabilities 
> I mentioned in
> > my "manifesto" would be a prerequisite for any involvement 
> in Gnome and
> > abiword by me and my company. Unless I'm convinced that 
> this platform can be
> > substantially better than Microsoft Windows/Office, I don't 
> see any chance
> > of success. If the Gnome community's sole advantage in the 
> marketplace is
> > that their software is free, it will fail IMHO.
> > 
> 
> We in abiword want our WP to be better than MS Word.
> We have a long term ambition to do that by implementing each
> feature we add to be as good or better than the equivalent MS feature.
> Over time we will add all the useful MS Word features and 
> leave the crap
> out. We will never implement the dancing paper clip.
> 
> Personally I hate the MS Equation Editor from Word 97. I'm 
> sure we can do
> better. I have many colleagues in the Sciences who sneer at 
> Word generated
> equations and the thing is a royal pain to use.
> 
> Anyway there is lots of free code to choose as a starting 
> point. The one
> from Lyx is already pretty close to what we need for input, the output
> needs to be improved though.
> 
> Thanks for you feedback and good luck to your company. By the way I
> personally know many Scientists and Engineers who already run Linux on
> their desktop and use Latex for maths. That's a much higher 
> standard than
> MS word and our real goal. We want to reach Latex quality.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Martin
> 
>