Re: (Slightly Off-Topic) Emacs-like Office App

[Paul Thompson <paul@wubios.wustl.edu>]

have you ever heard of TeX/LaTeX????

Todd Wylie wrote:
> bobstopper@australispro.com.au writes:
> 
> I, for one, would love to see an application that merged the WYSIWYG features of a word processor with the underlying power of Emacs. This may start the old "Emacs is a text processor not a word processor" debate... but there are times when I want a straight ahead editor (programming) and other times I want to view text in a word processor (I'm writing a book right now). Trying to get Emacs to show text in manuscript format is a pain in the butt (double-spacing lines without hard returns, specific margins, headers and footers with page numbers, etc.). However, no word processor I have ever found matches the power and scope of Emacs (try running a regex search in MS Word). I really do wish someone would merge the two concepts someday. 
> If anyone responds directly to you about such a package existing -- please let me know. 
> 
> Thanks-
> TODD
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>Hi
>>
>>This isn't really a request for help with Emacs but a request for knowledge
>>on Applications inspired by Emacs, specifically office type Applications.
>>
>>I love how Emacs is so extensible and provides so many features due to its
>>use of modes and elisp. So what I'm (very idly at this stage) considering
>>is the idea of an office kinda suite (yeah, like M$) all within the one
>>program through the use of emacs style modes and retaining a lot of
>>extensibility through a lisp dialect (probably guile).
>>
>>Emacs can probably do something similar to what I'm thinking already if 
>>support was written for it, but I'm thinking Emacs would probably remain,
>>well, ugly in the eyes of typical office workers and it would thus
>>be unappealing.
>>
>>Instead I'm envisioning something that looks a lot like current gnome
>>office products... only it's capable of doing all of them simply by loading
>>the appropriate modes (perhaps after first writing them ;).
>>
>>Gnome office is a great idea and I think it's a great alternative to M$
>>office but I think the idea of having separate programs attempting to 
>>integrate through some additional system like bonobo or OLE will still
>>remain somewhat unintegrated and perhaps not as consistent in its interface
>>as what I'm suggesting would be. I imagine typical office users would be
>>much more satisfied if they only needed the one app that could do everything
>>and I imagine advanced office users and programmers would be much more
>>satisfied if they can extend that app to do almost anything they please.
>>
>>So if something *better* (rather than just equivalent) than M$ office is
>>written as part of the GNU/Linux project then we have much more clout for
>>winning the average user over. I imagine for this sort of goal the app
>>would almost certainly have to have a fully featured M$ Windows port so
>>it can first appeal to all these M$ windows users, and once they're won
>>over it's a small step to realising that if everything they need for
>>office work is in that app, and that app is available on GNU why not just
>>use GNU?
>>
>>So, with that description of my infant idea in mind, I have a couple of
>>questions:
>>
>>Does anyone know if something like what I'm describing already exists
>>or is in the process of being written etc?
>>
>>and of course:
>>
>>Is my idea stupid, infeasible, lacking in some major consideration, too
>>damned hard etc or is it actually a good idea?
>>
>>I'm looking forward to any kinds of comments/suggestions. Thanks!
>