At 06:46 PM 5/7/00 -0600, you wrote: The most professional, cross-platform, free procedural markup system (that's what pros call a true "word processor") is still \TeX. And it runs in almost every sufficiently-capable system that I know of. Not long ago, most academic book publishers in the general area of electrical engineering actually advocated the use of TeX by authors and editors. Integration of the manuscript was a joyride, and the result were always professional-looking. I enjoyed writing chapters or individual papers for several such publication efforts in the last ten years. Nowadays, publishers also provide Word macros in addition to the usual TeX or LaTeX style files. The problem is, when compiling a volume, you better have all of the contributing authors submit their chapters using the same platform, or the integration becomes a nightmare. I am going through exactly such misery, because other fellow authors (and the editors) chose Word. But I would never write my cherished equations using Word's equation editor; they would look like crap. And all the fine details regarding spacing and professional markup that distinguish typesetting from simple, office-quality word processing are still absent from Word. In order to blend my chapter into this volume, I've had to hack (in the sense of "chop") the carefully written style files of some guru at TeXnology Inc. While I have learned a lot about TeX internals in the process, the fact that I am doing this in order to make TeX's output look like Word's has caused me unbearable pain. What the world has come to thanks to MS. Somebody got it right earlier in the thread. Worse is better. Carlos.