Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 13:01:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Joseph Mallett <jmallett@newgold.net> To: Freddie Cash <fcash@bigfoot.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Just an observation - MUA's seen in the lists Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0104131301110.27707-100000@aphex.newgold.net> In-Reply-To: <3AD6CE45.5872.383AAA1@localhost>
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I recommend FrameMaker for a lot of the stuff mentioned below... It's great for technical writing, etc. FrameMaker+SGML is nice... If you can afford it. /joseph -- Joseph Mallett Security Specialist jmallett@newgold.net www.newgold.net irc.newgold.net/#xMach xMach Core Team jmallett@xMach.org www.xMach.org On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, Freddie Cash wrote: > On 13 Apr 2001, at 16:59, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > > > Or many of us are at work in a Windows only shop as the desktops, > > > > and our webservers are nix. [Flame War --- As M$ office is just > > > > about the best office product out there ]. > > > > [What's this white spirits sitting by my desk? /me throws it away] > > > Agree. There is no other office suite worth the same. > > > To all ye office users: > > I have some questions about MS Word. I never use it myself, but I > > know people who do, and it seems to me that they have a hard time > > doing some very basic things which TeX/LaTeX have done since the > > 1980s. Or maybe Word does do all this but users don't know it? > [snip] > WordPerfect 7+ does this. Just finished a couple of papers for > school that used all but the label feature. The nice thing is that > even when it does something automatically, you can go into Reveal > Codes to see what it did, and customise it to the way you work. > > > > These are the things I'm doubtful about. There are plenty of > things > > I'm not doubtful about: Word doesn't do them, at least not in any word > > document I've seen. > > (1) Math: Word's support for equations is rudimentary at best. > Word *really* lacks in this area. WordPerfect is great for this. > Did all my Stats notes in WP8, and have nice equations, while the guy > next to me tried using Word 97, and gave up after the first month. > > > (3) Paragraph-level formatting: TeX formats text a paragraph at a > > time, to avoid ugly effects like "ladders" that could happen when > > you do things a line at a time. Adobe introduced that in some of > > their DTP software much later. Word doesn't do it. > You *can* do this in word, but there's no indication of where the > formatting starts and stops. WordPerfect does this beautifully, > though. And you can copy word/line/paragraph/page/document level > formatting between areas. > > > (4) Spacing after full stops: in English language text, traditionally > > one leaves a bit of extra space after a full stop. TeX does this, > > using some simple rules to recognise a full stop. On the rare > > occasions it gets this wrong, you can overrule it. > Word can be set up to do this via auto-correct. However, it is > *very* hard to change a document from 1-space to 2-spaces after a > full-stop without reading through the document correcting things like > "Dr. So-and-so". > > > End result: TeX/LaTeX documents are consistently beautiful to look at: > > you have to try rather hard to screw them up. MS Word documents are > > almost always hideous. You can argue that Word is not meant to be > > publication-quality stuff, but unfortunately that's what many people > Word isn't meant for anything more difficult than writing the > occasional letter. Unless you want to spend gregarious amounts of > money on courses to learn all the intricacies of how to make Word > annoy you less. :) > > > do use it for. Besides, I prefer even an ordinary letter to be nicely > > typeset, and LaTeX lets me do that without compromising on ease of > > use. (For those who must have their point&click, there's LyX.) > > Cheers, > Freddie > fcash@bigfoot.com > > > Reject complexity, embrace simplicity, and leave your > ego at the door. > - Colonel Kernel @ http://dualboot.net > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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