Re: RTF for emacs

[Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:
>
>> There's another type of document though, those that
>> are simple, but too complex to make using plain text.
>
> Are you sure? Can you be more specific?

I gave a few examples earlier, what about letters?  What about short
documents containing tables and diagram?  I often write these at work to
explain things to other people.  What about making a document that's
just a set of photos or pictures?

>> I was talking about writing letters earlier.  Even
>> that case is tricky.  Have you tried printing a
>> letter containing Unicode characters?  On my Xubuntu
>> 12.04 system that doesn't work, they appear as escape
>> codes.  Unfortunately, lots of programs still don't
>> treat UTF-8 correctly.
>
> If you are more specific, there are groups that can
> help you with that in an instant. Try alt.os.linux or
> debian.user (as Xubuntu is a Debian fork, way back).

There may be a fix for that, it's true.  There are bunch of other
problems though.  In Emacs if you ps-print a buffer then it comes with a
huge header.  If you print it normally then the margins are tiny.
There's no convienent way to include images, such as scans of other
documents.  This stuff doesn't work well because very few people write
letters using plain text.  I could fix it, but it would probably break
in the future for that reason.

> LaTeX is not difficult and you can learn it very
> fast. However, if you are stuck at work with Words all
> day long it might not be an option right now, but it is
> not difficult, trust me - and especially if you set up
> templates (or skeletons) as has been suggested by me
> and others. I'm not telling you what to do, I'm only
> saying it is not difficult.

I've tried to learn it.  I found it difficult to learn and I found
the resources on the internet poor.  Almost all of them seem to assume
that the user has read one of the books on the subject already.

BR,
Robert Thorpe