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Three Technical Word Processors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Robert Cudeck  and
Dennis P. McGuire
Robert Cudeck*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Dennis P. McGuire
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert Cudeck, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minnespolis, MN 55455.
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Extract

If Gutenberg had been a psychometrician, the invention of movable type would have occured much later than the year 1456. As anyone who has ever approached the problem knows, the requirements for automating technical writing are much greater than those for standard prose. A writer of technical documents needs all standard Roman letters, plus the full array of Greek characters, mathematical symbols, and the ability to freely half space for superscripts and subscripts. It is not known when the first scientific or technical manuscript was produced with movable type, but one can be sure that it came decades after Gutenberg's Bible.

In our time it has taken substantially longer for word processing software that is used in conjunction with a microcomputer to be developed for the technical writer than for the writer of standard prose.

Type
Computational Psychometrics Reviews
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 137 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

The authors are indebted to Goldstein Software, and TCI Software Research, Inc. for their support of this review.

Special thanks to the Computing Editor, Forrest Young, for supporting an evaluation of software that is unusual for this section of the journal, but which we believe may be of general interest, and for his Job-like patience during a too-long review.

References

Bosak, S. (1985). Scientific and technical word processors—Part I [Review of Volkswriter Scientific, T3, and ProofWriter]. Micro/Systems Journal, 1(3), 40–47.Google Scholar
Boston Computer Society IBM PC Users's Group (1986). Technical word processors for the IBM PC and compatibles. Notices of the American Mathematicsl Society, 33, 8–37.Google Scholar
Palais, R. S. (1986). Mathematical text processing. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 33, 3–5.Google Scholar
Shuford, R. S. (1983). Word tools for the IBM personal computer [Review of EasyWriter II, Final Word, WordStar, and Volkswriter]. BYTE, 8(5), 176–216.Google Scholar