Playing with LaTeX

["Carl Distefano" cld@xxxxxxxx]

I've been playing with the LaTeX document preparation system since the
turn of the New Year. LaTeX source files are plain-text markup, so
creating and editing them in XyWrite is natural. As an exercise, I
decided to translate the documentation for a regular expression search-
and-replace utility that I've been developing for Harry B. into a LaTeX
document. The result is here:

http://users.datarealm.com/ammaze/xfer/RCI.PDF

At first I was dubious that this would be a suitable vehicle for Xy-
related documentation, but in fact the output is quite readable and
printable, with the professional look that is LaTeX's hallmark. Well,
that's my biased view, anyway; I welcome your candid reactions.

The software package described in the document seems stable and, if I
do say so, exceptionally useful. Harry wanted to do search-and-replace
operations involving intricate changes and moving around big blocks of
text, and XyWrite's SEarch wildcards weren't up to the task. Regular
expressions proved to be just the ticket. The package includes U2
routines for XyWrite 4 and standalone Windows executables that work
well with any version of XyWrite or Nota Bene. There's a download link
and instructions in the PDF file if you'd like to try it.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx