Text Processing

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Department of Finance and Graduate Statistical Assistant Program, FMRC

General Description of Main Text Processing

This web page provides a general description of some widespread text editors. Links to related material are also provided.

The editors described are the following:
 



TeX/LaTeX

TeX is a computer program created by Donald E. Knuth. It is aimed at typesetting text and mathematical formulae. Knuth started writing the TeX typesetting engine in 1977. TeX as we use it today was released in 1982, with some slight enhancements added in 1989 to better support 8-bit characters and multiple languages. TeX is renowned for being extremely stable, for running on many different kinds of computers, and for being virtually bug free.

LaTeX is a macro package which enables authors to typeset and print their work at the highest typographical quality, using a professional layout. LaTeX was originally written by Leslie Lamport. It uses the TeX formatter as its typesetting engine.

An easy to use guide on LaTeX is "The Not So Short Introduction to L A T E X2". It contains all what is needed for a beginner and it can be used as a reference manual as well.

An on-line help for LaTeX is available through Debian.

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Unix Editors

Unix text editors are quite unlike the word processors found on Windows and Macintosh systems. They do not support WYSIWYG editing, auto-formatting, line-wrapping, multiple fonts, or multiple font sizes. Instead they are oriented toward plain text.

On the plus side, Unix text editors have lots of features, such as auto-indentation and syntax highlighting, that make them idea for writing scripts, programs, and HTML pages.

Text Editors available on Linux Systems are the following:

vi
Non-graphical (terminal-based) editor. Guaranteed to be available on any system. Requires knowledge of arcane keystroke commands. Distinctly unfriendly to novices. A Reference Manual written by Christopher C. Taylor gives the basics to get started.

emacs
Window-based editor. Primitive menus make it slightly more friendly to novices. Still need to know keystroke commands to use. Installed on all Linux distributions and on most other Unix systems.

xemacs
More sophisticated version of emacs, but usually not installed by default. All common commands are available from menus; however the user interface is still confusing at first. Very powerful editor, with built-in syntax checking, Web-browsing, news-reading, manual-page browsing, etc.

pico
Simple terminal-based editor available on most versions of Unix. Uses keystroke commands, but they are listed in logical fashion at bottom of screen.

To find information on how to use those editors, the user can use the command "man [editor name]" into the Unix environment. The simple to use of these editors is pico.

An extensive collection of materials and procedure is available on the web site of the OceanWave Consulting or at the UCLA Advanced Technology Services.

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Updated:  November 2001 , GSA.