Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 10:20:42 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> Cc: ML Duke <mlduke@concentric.net>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Introductory Book on FreeBSD Message-ID: <20010523102042.C76823@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <3B0A9F21.6C6654F3@acuson.com>; from djohnson@acuson.com on Tue, May 22, 2001 at 10:17:21AM -0700 References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10105212307540.318-100000@mlduke.concentric.net> <3B0A9F21.6C6654F3@acuson.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tuesday, 22 May 2001 at 10:17:21 -0700, David Johnson wrote:
> ML Duke wrote:
>
>> So he has a look, says basically "not bad for a draft," and then
>> says you did it with $mswurd!??!
>>
>> What kind of statement is _that_?
>
> Hee, hee. I can offer two comebacks, but not being the author, I can't
> say for sure.
>
> 1) If you know MSWurd very well, then it is going to be easier to write
> the book in MSWurd than in StarOffice or Applix. You will need to format
> the final document, and it's easier and faster to format in a WYSIWYG
> word processor than to use DocBook, TeX or groff macros.
There are two issues here:
1. Ease of writing is not the same thing as document quality. I
don't want to pick on Annelise: after all, this is a draft.
You'll note, though, that the paragraphs are not right-justified.
I suspect I know the reason for this, and it's a good one: MSword
doesn't give you the control over hyphenation that more
professional tools do. If I were constrained to write in MSword,
I'd probably punt on the right justification too.
2. StarOffice and Applix aren't really alternatives. The issue with
MSword is not so much that it's from Microsoft as that it's an
"easy" solution rather than a "good" one.
3. (bonus :-) You can write DocBook in MSword. This is not exactly
a typical use of the software, however.
> 2) Publishers accept submissions in MSWord only, for the most part. A
> publisher once wanted to contract with me to proofread and technical
> edit a Linux programming book. But the galley was in MSWord and I had
> submit all corrections and edits as inplace MSWord comments. Since the
> job wouldn't pay enough to cover a harddrive+Windows+MSOffice, I had to
> turn it down.
Some publishers do indeed frequently prefer MSword. They're not
usually the ones who produce the best-looking books. The ones I have
spoken to have all been prepared to accept manuscripts in other
formats. Remember that what we're looking at here is a draft; before
publishing they'll do a lot of work on the format.
Greg
--
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010523102042.C76823>