CompuServe Messages

Jonathan, I also use Microsoft Word, extensively. I spend most of my time in that environment—but with just a simple style-sheet that provides visual separation of paragraphs, and no formatting per-se—and then import the text into Ventura Publisher for formatting and layout. I confess I haven't yet used VP's index facility, just the Table of Contents generation, so I don't have a considered opinion as yet. I'm in the midst of preparing a medium-size manual just now and will probably have to bite the bullet and get acquainted with indexing soon. No system of indexing is very easy and from what I've read about VP's version, it seems like the usual sort of headache (inserting index entries where they belong). The main problem is selecting index-able topics and keeping track of the keywords so that you don't have several nearly-alike entries. One thing that's very poor in VP is the lack of a "cross-reference" facility. You have to indicate these manually and if the sectioning changes, it's a major headache. That's one area where TeX (actually, LaTeX) is much better than VP. I'm not familiar with Publisher's Type Foundry and I'm also reluctant to run Windows, so… (too slow)! I guess I'll have to wait for some more progress on DTP fonts and not get too anxious about the math-italic faces. RE: fiction. I haven't really completed anything in that regard. I've started several books that are "Michael Crichton"-like things (Andromeda Strain), but seem to bog down and discard them before completion. I'm inclined toward computer-oriented fiction…maybe some day… 🙂 -rich-