This document rates word processors and typesetting systems and explains their good and bad points. It is a companion to Long Term Storage of Electronic Data and Documents.
| name | type | advantage | storage method | storage efficiency | Grade |
| wordY | word processor | "ease" of use, popular among CAS victims | binary | horrible | F, binary storage is a very bad choice |
| wordIMperfeKt | word processor | "ease" of use, popular among CAS victims | binary | poor | F, binary storage is a very bad choice |
| RTF | word processor | ASCII storage | ASCII | poor | D, too many typesetting details specified in the language |
| Troff | typesetter | ASCII storage | ASCII | good | C, ancient, not well designed |
| TeX | typesetter | ASCII storage, language | ASCII | good | B-, hard to use. EXCELLENT typesetting. Documentation and packages are scattered, hard to find |
| LaTeX | typesetter | ASCII storage, language | ASCII | good | B, EXCELLENT typesetting documentation and packages are scattered, hard to find |
| HTML | typesetter | ASCII storage, language | ASCII | good | B, fully integrated into the web, but not a full language |
| StarOffice / OpenOffice | word processor | ASCII storage as XML, with unicode support EXCELLENT! Reads RTF, wordy and wordimperfekt files. | ASCII | good | A: OpenOffice, is the open source. I use latex2rtf to convert from LaTeX to RTF and then can read it into OpenOffice! This means that one can write in LaTeX and send (stupid) RTF to people! |
This page was written entirely with my personal resources on my own time. No governmental funds or equipment were used.
Tom Schneider's Home Page