Thanks for all the suggestions on a math paper tool. I guess I should have been more specific. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choice of language I am stuck with Windows XP Home, and I am sometimes tempted to write papers for the JIS, but I'm daunted by the task. If I had looked at the current JIS home page, I wouldn't have had to ask about the format, since the JIS accepts only LaTex documents. That settles the format issue. Besides, the overwhelming majority of recommendations were to use LaTeX anyway. AMS articles require AMS LaTeX, but I don't think I'm in danger of writing one of those for the moment. I am not exactly sure what TeX is all about. I used to think it was pretty much a markup language, a format as it were. But now it appears that there are associated fonts and other baggage. I'll have to educate myself better on TeX. I'll check out MikTeX when I can. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Choice of editor With regards to wysiwyg equation editor versus text editor, I think it is a moot issue. The best of all possible worlds includes both. The equation editor makes the big projects and messy equations tractable and gives you a view of the final product, while the text editor helps you do the fine tuning. Most enviroments have at least a text editor, so the issue boils down to whether the word processor includes an TeX-capable equation editor. Here are the suggestions I got for editors: TeXmacs. On the plus side, a true TeX editor. Installs under Cygwin, which I already use. Looks as if the TeXmacs project envisions broad support for TeX. On the downside, I'm not a Lisp weenie, so emacs will be a learning curve. Hopefully one can configure and use emacs without having to know Lisp indepth. Also, I remember that emacs used to have a "vi" mode for us "vi" weenies. Definitely worth a look. OpenOffice. I had a short experience with StarOffice, a precursor to OpenOffice, as a means to deal with MS Word files on an UNIX system. I don't know much about the Writer word processor. It seems to have equation writing capabilties, but is not TeX capable. Open to education on this point though. TeX Live and Kile appear to be non-Windows; ego I can't use them. MS Word. I am a reluctant Microsoft user. I hear the warnings that MS Word has problems for large documents, and I believe it. MS apps aren't widely used because they are reliable. I'm still using Word '97. I haven't tried Works Word Processor. Word has a pretty lame equation editor, which can be upgraded to Design Science's MathType editor for $130. MathType apparently gives you math capabilities in Word, HTML, and the major TeX variants. I have had good experiences with Design Science's MathPlayer. As far as Eequation suggested by Steve Gray, I can't seem to find it on the Web, a link would be good. If I choose to avoid MathType, I can use Chikrii Softlab's Word2Tex to convert Word to TeX, for $99. Also, I heed the warnings that MS Word itself has problems for large documents. ASCIIMathML will be very useful to me, thanks Mr. Stay. - David W. Wilson "Truth is just truth -- You can't have opinions about the truth." - Peter Shickele, from P.D.Q. Bach's oratorio "The Seasonings"