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MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

mackichan.com

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Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#41

Post by padthai »

7thaccount wrote: post #11
airbreather wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it due to the market, or the owners are retiring/giving up?

If it is due to retirement, the other employees might not be able to take over the product if it has been a 1 person show. I know of similar software where if the main developer were to leave, I have zero confidence they could do much besides maintenance. It isn't just the code, but having the mathematical understanding of the problem. Also, without looking at this in general, I wonder if it's hard to compete with Ma…

Mathematica is at least ~$1.5k/year, ~$3k if you want only the desktop application, no WolframAlpha-like features. Licenses on the desktop are not per user, but per machine (8 core limitation). If you want to move the installation to another machine, you have to send them a signed document and contact Wolfram (the company, not the person). I could go on all day about the friction and restrictions.

They have an excellent and unique product and I would love to pour them money (between me and my employer we pay about EUR 1000 /year to Intellij, and this is only one provider). But for some reason I do not feel comfortable between the immense power imbalance between them and myself. It makes me uneasy to invest in the ecosystem.

I wonder how many clients they have their CAP users in the academic world.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#42

Post by asdf_snar »

pjmlp wrote: post #33
amichail wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TeXmacs is better than Word for documents containing math.

Given that Word does LaTeX math, why would that be?

Writing math in Word has the following disadvantages:

- referencing is a nightmare (this is probably the worst aspect). \label and \ref or \eqref? No, remember the equation number, click the References tab, Cross-Reference, select "equation" from the "Reference type" dropdown list, scroll down to the equation whose number you should remember, click "Insert". Did you add remove/an equation, thereby changing all subsequent equation numbers? Let's hope "Update all fields" works on the first try (hint: it won't).

- AMS math standards, \mathbb{R}, \mathcal{R}? No, \doubleR, \scriptR.

- \bar{x}? No, \bar SPACE SPACE left-arrow x right-arrow.

- \begin{align*}? No, good luck. (Actually I haven't even figured this one out).

- Version control? No, "Track changes". Oh, you changed a subscript or superscript? Your file is corrupted and cannot be saved, Ctrl-z until you can save and hope you remember all your changes.

- Seamless math typing if you are fast and proficient at LaTeX? No, Alt+= and hold on while I catch up. Did you go too fast? Sorry, Word has stopped responding. (This is a real problem in a 50+ page Word document full of math.)

Those are just the ones off the top of my head.

+1 for TeXmacs being superior to both Word and LaTeX. After using LaTeX for years I tried TeXmacs for a week and never looked back.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#43

Post by ThinkBeat »

I am so sorry to hear that.

I wish that when companies such as this do go out of business that they should transition the licensing model to perpetual.

It is gracious to keep running the licesnse server ut once it ends that is it.

If the company is not going to lose any money because of it, which they will not since they are out fo the busness entirely, let the users have a chance to keep using it.

(without support, without bugfixes, without upgrades to new platforms)

Presumably this could lead to people sharing licensing detals and non paying customers may over time start using it, that should be an acceptable risk, given that there is no monetary gain nor loss.

It would be awesome to have access to a rich library of dead software that people could use for free.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#46

Post by salamandersauce »

asdf_snar wrote: post #42
pjmlp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Word does LaTeX math, why would that be?

Writing math in Word has the following disadvantages: - referencing is a nightmare (this is probably the worst aspect). \label and \ref or \eqref? No, remember the equation number, click the References tab, Cross-Reference, select "equation" from the "Reference type" dropdown list, scroll down to the equation whose number you should remember, click "Insert". Did you add remove/an equation, thereby changing all subseq…

It's also just a tiny subset of LaTeX commands and not real LaTeX. I use the bm package to make things bold and I can't use that in Word. It doesn't support \begin{} and \end{} for any environment so for stuff like matrices you need to use special Word syntax \matrix{}.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#47

Post by bachmeier »

I used Scientific Word to write my dissertation and my first academic papers. It was a great piece of software in the late 1990s, at least relative to the alternatives, which were writing .tex files yourself or typing in a word processor. I have a coauthor that still uses SW.

I can't say this is surprising. I moved to LyX long ago, and then after markdown became popular I ditched LyX and went with that. There are lots of strong alternatives today. There probably aren't many people willing to pay for something they can get for free, that they already have, or that doesn't provide features for collaboration.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#49

Post by bachmeier »

zerop wrote: post #45

I feel terrible when I come across great products while they shutdown.. why I didn't know it?

In 2021 there's honestly not any good reason to know about Scientific Word. It was a good product 20 years ago, but it doesn't bring much to the table today that you'd have a reason to pay for.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#50

Post by syntaxfree »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #27
amichail wrote: post #3

Will everyone switch to TeXmacs, which is truly WYSIWYG and does not use TeX/LaTeX? See: https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/videos.en.html

It's a pity it's called "TeXmacs" when, as you say, it really has no connection to TeX (except the ability to typeset mathematics). Another alternative is LyX, which actually does use LaTeX. Even that is not really a "LaTeX editor" though: it produces/exports excellent LaTeX, and uses that for typesetting, but does pretty poorly at importing LaTeX (as the developers freely admit). Depending on your situation that may…

Re: lyx as a hard to get into GUI.

Overleaf has decent tab completion and dozens of templates, as well as limited support for markdown. Let tabnine and copilot get to LaTeX; I think we’ll find the discoverability of “text language on Adderall” outguns GUIs.

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