In a message about PRINTER DRIVERS, Earl Gately wrote to Franco Rios:
 EG> Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same. It 
 EG> was once that people who did Word Processing using their computer had 
 EG> the niche. What one needs is really the best of both worlds. I like the 
 EG> idea of a dedicated word processing machine with the computer interface. 
 EG> If one is creating pages of documents and there is no need for Databases 
 EG> or SpreadSheets, why use anything else?
  
  Thanks for the reply, Earl!
  In our homebased word processing business, we believe we are building the 
best of all worlds that we can.  We have typewriters for typing forms, and a 
daisy wheel printer for clients that want envelopes addressed that look like 
they were typed on a typewriter.  We take the info from a database file.
  We use MS Word (to get back on topic [grin]), as our main workhorse.  We 
can process manuscripts, newsletters, and simple flyers with it.  For 
academic typing, we use Courier font, because it's supposed to look like it 
was typed (?!!) and the OCR scanners can handle Courier easily.  Of course, 
if they ask, we can supply a copy on disk and they can skip the OCR scanning 
completely.  
  We use the graph wizards for inserting graphs in the academic papers.  It's 
neat stuff!  Indexes, tables, on and on.
  So what does it come down to?  That today's word processing software is so 
flexible and feature packed that unless someone takes the time to learn all 
the tricks, the sophisticated tool becomes a poor digital simulation of a 
typewriter.
  Which is why many professional business services like ours are members of 
trade associations so we can exchange info about business with others. Beside 
word processing and manuscript typing, the business services can include 
database management, mail merge and labeling, bulk mail services, resume 
preparation, web page design (HTML), transcription, etc.
  I have a list of resources for word processing businesses if you (or anyone 
else) is interested.  Send me a net-mail or an e-mail and I'll send it to 
you.  Please don't ask for it in this conference, I don't want to clutter up 
this echo with requests that may not be of interest to everybody.
  Thanks again for the reply!
  Be seeing ya!
  - Franco Rios
  FIDO NetMail-  1:203/23
  Internet e-mail-  franco.rios@evillage.gigo.com
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