hihi, all - i forgot to add that latex runs on macs, too, and probly a bunch of other systems and machines i don't know about i think that the fact that latex is not wysiwyg is one of its most important advantanges, since you can see the commands that cause the formatting (as you could in word perfect, but mostly can't in word), so you can set th eformatting rules as you like them all of the commands can be considered to be meta-knowledge about the format of the paper, and it is all accessible and changeable (e.g., is it easy to change all of the 11-point characters to 12-point, without changing any of the other sizes? i end up needing to do stuff like that a lot, as i switch from a draft mode to a final submission mode without changing the text at all) yes, it was not easy to change from scribe to latex (in late 1987, i think), especially with the only latex book at the time, written by leslie lamport, but it was worth it for the formatting of the mathematical equations - i write 30-40 technical papers or reports every year, so the knowledge doesn't leak out as much as if i wrote less the two books i use all the time for latex information are the latex companion, by goossens, mittelbach, and samarin and the latex graphics companion by goossens, rahtz, and mittelbach george gra:tzer wrote a latex book also, which has more than the other books about making certain mathematical expressions in latex more soon, cal