Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing

[Terry Grevstad]

>In article <1246 at kitty.UUCP> larry at kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes:
>...
>>	So my question is: Am I WRONG in advising people to stay with ``vi''
>>and not spend money for "word-processing software" in the BUSINESS APPLICATION
>>environment?
>...
>higgin at cbmvax.UUCP (Paul Higginbottom) says:
>Yes, I think you're wrong.  Secretaries don't have time, nor do they usually
>want to learn something like Unix.  They will prefer EVERY TIME something
>which works as similarly as possible to their typewriter.

Well, I think Larry is right.  I would stay with vi and nroff and
troff.  I started out at my current job trying to teach everyone who
needed to know how to use nroff-troff, and what I wound up doing was
this:

       1.  I set up a group of macros for creating letters and memos
	   which was extremely simple to use.  If all they wanted to 
	   do was letters and memos all they had to learn was about
	   20 macro calls and how to use them.  This is much simpler
	   than most of the word-processing software I've seen, and
	   everything comes out uniform because everyone is using
	   the same thing.

       2.  I made myself available on a one-to-one basis to anyone
	   who had some major project to do that went beyond the
	   letter/memo macros.  I now have 3-4 people in the office
	   who can usually manage to do just about anything with
	   nroff/troff/tbl (we don't have much use for eqn) and I
	   have very few questions to answer any more.

Considering that there are now 8 people in the office using
nroff/troff and getting everything they want out of it, I've been very
happy with the results.  I'd go for vi/nroff/troff again whenever
possible.  

One little disclaimer:  I do think that there needs to be at least
one person who already knows nroff/troff and is readily available to
the others who are learning.  I picked this stuff up on my own with
only the UNIX nroff/troff manual (phfew :-{) and it took me at least
a month of solid 8-hours-a-day work to begin to feel like I knew what
I was doing.
-- 
\"\t\f1A\h'+1m'\f4\(mo\h'+1m'\f1the\h'+1m'\f4\(es\t\f1\c
_______________________________________________________________________

                                                       Terry Grevstad
                                         Network Research Corporation
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