> Depends on the writer. Some of us still fondly remember Atex. Sure, it was prone to crashing and revealing your e-mail to others in the newsroom, and sure its keyboard had six gazillion indeciperhable keys, but it really focused your mind - since all you could do with it was write (plus, the keyboard was handy for killing bugs or for smashing your desk in frustration; I still have two of the beasts in my office).<
Ahhh Atex. I still remember a handful of requests back around 1998 to duplicate Ctext cut/paste/move functionality in MS Word...but you're absolutely right...it all depends on the individual writers. > Yep: Most reporters don't want to know from fonts! This depends too on the organization and the writers. I spent a great deal of time automating the (imperfect) conversion of ANPA wire to styled MS Word documents for numerous clients. Not only did they want to see the precise styles, but also the column widths and tab stops - this helped them to estimate space requirements before and after placing the text into Quark templates. > Again, a lot of reporters still think of print as their main medium and the main question there is whether the story gets on the front page or not, not how wide the columns are (especially since, in print, they're fixed).< Article length is always a concern in print, right up to deadline. So much so that some older CM systems jumped through hoops to attempt to calculate (inaccurately I might add) column length from within MS Word. Apparently, size mattered. ;-) -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
