Why use the TeX suite?
Ross Maloney
the TeX suite, both in academic circles, and more generally in industry,
government, and business. Document production, and their presentation,
appears to be dominated by Microsoft OFFICE because little else is
known. But each person has to be trained (or shown) at some stage how
to use OFFICE. Has the cost, in wide terms, of that effort been assessed
and appreciated?
In addressing the thread question, consider the LaTeX, BibTeX, and
Beamer components of the TeX suite. A common set of attributes that
supports the used of each of these components include the following:
o open source and free for all to use, with minimal restrictions;
o open source means that they can be changed to suit requirements;
o controlled by a text file that you prepare and store;
o that text file uses words as markup to identify component parts;
o information stored in such markup text is not lost with that software;
o results produced are visually unsurpassed.
Specific attributes supporting the use of each of these three components
individually are:
LaTeX:
o automatic numbering of all compnent parts of a document;
o has a mechanism to reference all such parts, in a general manner;
o type-sets mathematics, algorithms, sequential steps, etc. correctly;
o very general formulation of tables;
o automatic production of lists of document parts;
o applicable to production of small to very large documents;
o 20 years of specialised document format contributions available.
BibTeX:
o many ways of presenting the reference citations;
o prepare the reference once - use it in multiple situations;
o automatic preparation of the reference list from in-text citations;
o keep notes about it, together with the reference itself;
o search for a reference by using any part of its record.
Beamer:
o the presentation produced is a PDF file;
o standard PDF reading software is used to deliver the presentation;
o many templates are available for creating the presentation;
o figures, tables, pictures, etc. can be inserted where required.
A reason given for the widespread use of OFFICE is that it is simple
(and natural) to use. If this be so, then why are there so many
instruction courses run on how to use it? Is the degree of computer
literacy, at the keyboard, greater to drive these TeX components than
their counterparts from OFFICE (Okay, EndNote is not part of OFFICE but
the missing piece)?
What is your opinion?
Cheers,
Ross
Gernot Hassenpflug
can cite a few off the top of my head:
1. business-targeted products and inter-operability, marketed superbly
2. support and upgrade paths over a huge cross-section of industries
3. need to keep compatibility with other market competitors
4. ease of use for no-expert workers
5. packages and incentives to buy
6. huge amount of 3rd party products from security to project planning
I think that the concentration on the specific business goals of a
middle- or large-sized business above all leads naturally to Microsoft
products, whereas people who care about how things work, rules, and
standards, non-business aspects and world-wide view of computing will
want products that enforce these.
--
BOFH excuse #111:
The salesman drove over the CPU board.
Brooks Moses
> A reason given for the widespread use of OFFICE is that it is simple
> (and natural) to use. If this be so, then why are there so many
> instruction courses run on how to use it? Is the degree of computer
> literacy, at the keyboard, greater to drive these TeX components than
> their counterparts from OFFICE (Okay, EndNote is not part of OFFICE but
> the missing piece)?
Office is trivially simple for most people to _start_ using. It's also
set up so that it's easy to learn how to use -- there's a convenient
help file right there in the application, and you can learn quite a lot
just by looking through all the menus and experimenting with them.
The instruction courses on how to use it are a quick way to learn a lot
about it, and to fill in any gaps that are left in what one learned by
experimenting -- it has a tremendous lot of features.
Using TeX requires a willingness to learn something by reading a book
(or at least an instruction manual) rather than just double-clicking the
icon and having things be obvious. It also requires a willingness to
look things up whenever one doesn't know how to do something, rather
than just pulling up the menus and finding it. And it requires a
capability to follow instructions without immediate feedback of whether
one's doing the right thing or not.
In any case, to create a very basic document -- yes, the amount of
computer literacy required to use TeX is significantly higher than the
amount of computer literacy required to use Word. Twenty years ago,
this was irrelevant; using a computer at all required a fair bit of
computer literacy, and just about anyone who could do that would be at a
level where they'd find TeX reasonably easy. That's not true today.
Moreover, TeX requires a certain _kind_ of computer literacy that's not
as common these days; the command line is more and more becoming an
advanced topic.
What that means is that, even if the amount of computer literacy
required to get really good scientific papers is about equivalent for
TeX and Word, the amount of computer literacy required in order to
_start_ learning how to use TeX is notably higher. And that's a barrier.
- Brooks
--
The "bmoses-nospam" address is valid; no unmunging needed.
Tim X
I also think there is a "safety in the centre of the hurd" mentality at work as
well. There are a growing number of managers in IT who actually know almost
nothing about it (but as the cliche goes, have very strong opinions about it)
and they get very nervous when having to make a decision which could be seen as
risky. While they might get the sack for making everyone use TeX and friends,
they are very safe making MS office/word the standard (and will probably refer
to it as "best practice").
The integration aspect is also very important. Like it or not, the majority of
businesses are using word. When you get that word document and the direction
"Add your bit and use track changes", what are you going to do. Essentially,
you have no choice but to use word. MS, through powerful marketing have managed
to get the lions share of business and that puts them in a very powerful
position. Many places (including wehre I currently work) have talked about and
even tried getting people to switch to alternatives that do provide some level
of cmpatibility, such as Open Office. However, resistance from users is high
and there is considerable resistance from management that can't see the
benefits outweighing the costs/risks.
I also think there is a lot of FUD regarding what is good technology. Many
times, when I've suggested LaTeX as a solution, the response I've recieved is
that it appears to be old fashioned and outdated. There is a perception that if
the software doesn't have a high end user environment with menus, click'n'drag
and doesn't integrate easily with everything else, it must be rubbish. The
interesting point here is that everyone, without exception, that I've managed
to convince to give LaTeX a honest go, once they have got past the initial
differences and once they are provided with a good environment (such as emacs
and auctex) have found it to be a much better environment to work in. Nearly
all of them have reported that it has in fact saved them lots of time, despite
not having heaps of menus and gui buttons. Many have reported that the
automatic numbering of sections, tables, figures etc is enough to make them
never want to use word again. However, as far as I know, all of them have to
still use Word from time to time (especially when doing jobs that have multiple
contributors etc).
the one concrete area where I can see MS coming unstuck is with their
constantly changing and evolving file formats. some businesses are beginning to
recognise the costs and hassles of having important documents locked into a
closed system that can make data inaccessible after a relatively short time.
However, I suspect MS is also beginning to recognise this and that is possibly
part of the reason they are establishing their file format as an open standard.
although I hope something like PDF will become even more common as a standard
document format, I have little confidence we will see any real sense with
respect to document formats and authoring tools - think about the audience we
are dealing with, many of whom still think HTML mail messages are a good thing!
Tim
--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
David Kastrup
> However, I suspect MS is also beginning to recognise this and that
> is possibly part of the reason they are establishing their file
> format as an open standard.
Actually, this meaning of "open" is the one commonly associated with
open sores, not open source. As far as I understand, Microsoft is
standardizing a packaging rather than the contents, and the contents
are pretty opaque and free to fester under Microsoft's auspices.
> although I hope something like PDF will become even more common as a
> standard document format,
PDF is not a document format but a page format since it lacks a lot of
structural information on the one hand (not even tagged PDF has it)
but embeds the results of typesetting (like the actual line and page
breaks) that are strictly dependent on the typesetting engine used and
not reproduceable by other engines.
--
David Kastrup
anon k
> Specific attributes supporting the use of each of these three components
> individually are:
>
> BibTeX:
> o many ways of presenting the reference citations;
But very poor support for many citation conventions used in the
humanities and social sciences.
A possible solution: Biblatex.
> Beamer:
> o figures, tables, pictures, etc. can be inserted where required.
But they can't be drawn easily, simple animations, and annotations (like
labels and arrows) to bitmaps are relatively hard to produce in LaTeX.
Cropping images and then scaling them to fit in LaTeX is messy.
Beamer is oriented towards TEXT which is not everyone's idea of good slides.
If you have to use a different application for the drawing, why not go
the whole hog and simplify the IT manager's job?
Jose Geraldo
> It appears to me that ignorance is a big factor in the small up-take of
> the TeX suite, both in academic circles, and more generally in industry,
> government, and business. Document production, and their presentation,
> appears to be dominated by Microsoft OFFICE because little else is
> known. But each person has to be trained (or shown) at some stage how
> to use OFFICE. Has the cost, in wide terms, of that effort been assessed
> and appreciated?
Good point. I will now share with you some of the experience I have
had advocating free software (LaTeX included) to both technical and
non-technical people. I am not doing this out of disrespect for you,
but merely because I want to debate said issues so that I can possibly
learn how to tackle them the next time I come across them.
> In addressing the thread question, consider the LaTeX, BibTeX, and
> Beamer components of the TeX suite. A common set of attributes that
> supports the used of each of these components include the following:
> o open source and free for all to use, with minimal restrictions;
> o open source means that they can be changed to suit requirements;
But actually few people can code, so this openness is only meaningful
to a minority. This is something I have personally been facing for
some time: most of the charm of open-source software is only charming
to technical-oriented people. The average office guy does not give a
damn for it.
> o controlled by a text file that you prepare and store;
The average mentality I have found is that people want big, colourful,
cluttered interfaces. If I were to code my own program I would include
some memory-wasting mechanism also because most office guys think that
the heaviest a program runs the more feature-rich it is. Lightweight
programs are for old hardware, in their opinion.
Therefore, anything that looks simple and easy is obsolete. They want
it big and complex (though they claim that they want it easy to use).
> o that text file uses words as markup to identify component parts;
Attractive to geeks, but not to most people.
> o information stored in such markup text is not lost with that software;
This is VERY IMPORTANT to me. I have personally lost lots of data from
file corruption. Now I understand why this is so good. But people
don't seriously think it is important. How can I convince a guy that
doesn't wear safety belts that a text file is safer than an obscure,
undocumented binary file?
> o results produced are visually unsurpassed.
If you know how to tweak them. Default results produced look like a
book typeset seventy years ago. Although I personally like the
defaults, most people to whom I have shown them complained that they
look "odd", "out of place" or "just ugly". Perhaps MS Word has
diverted the typographical tastes of people from good practices, I
dunno.
> Specific attributes supporting the use of each of these three components
> individually are:
>
> LaTeX:
> o automatic numbering of all compnent parts of a document;
Most people I know type the numbers and are happy with it.
> o has a mechanism to reference all such parts, in a general manner;
Most people I know do not use references at all or only use a handful
of them, manually referenced.
> o type-sets mathematics, algorithms, sequential steps, etc. correctly;
Most people I know will use bitmaps in place of equations, happily.
> o very general formulation of tables;
Although LaTeX tables are pretty, their markup is horrible and they
are, generally, too rigid and hard to use. This is one thing about TeX/
LaTeX that could be improved.
> o applicable to production of small to very large documents;
> o 20 years of specialised document format contributions available.
Most of the features you mention are worth a thousand bucks if you
have to produce such documents on a regular basis. But if you will
only produce your course papers or perhaps an eventual thesis, TeX's
advantages fade quite a bit.
> Beamer:
> o the presentation produced is a PDF file;
Which means it is restricted by the presenting program's options. Most
people just love the transition effects offered by PowerPoint and just
want them.
> o standard PDF reading software is used to deliver the presentation;
You can still find countless computers without PDF-reading software.
Especially in Brazil. I was once scolded by a sysadmin when I asked
him to install Adobe Reader to present something. He said: "We don't
install unknown pieces of software here."
> o many templates are available for creating the presentation;
But they don't include neat background bitmaps or embedded music.
> o figures, tables, pictures, etc. can be inserted where required.
But in PowerPoint (of Impress, for that matter) you can easily make
them visually. Even graphs!
> A reason given for the widespread use of OFFICE is that it is simple
> (and natural) to use. If this be so, then why are there so many
> instruction courses run on how to use it? Is the degree of computer
> literacy, at the keyboard, greater to drive these TeX components than
> their counterparts from OFFICE (Okay, EndNote is not part of OFFICE but
> the missing piece)?
The problem is that people have been conditioned over time to think
that the mouse is better than the keyboard and that visual interfaces
are better than text interfaces. The reason why there are so many
courses teaching Office is not that the program is hard, but that most
people are sooo stupid. I can't stand the fact that so many people
have to see the instructor point-and-click several times in File >
Print to learn how to do it. Another reason is that the System (i.e.
companies) do not want people who learn things alone: you have to
provide a certification. These courses may be pointless but they give
you a neat Certificate you can use in your resume.
> What is your opinion?
TeX is hated. Most people I have seen using it (five, in total) only
use it because it is required or because it is the only way to do what
they need to do (most of them doing Physics or Maths).
TeX is obsolete in the sense that there is only residual demand for
it. Minorities are obsolete. As in the software market there are no
affirmative actions or racial quotes to prevent these from fading away
it is very likely that, as word processing programs incorporate
features once exclusive to TeX, it will become even more obsolete.
TeX is dying. Command-line users are not appearing anew every day. LyX
is the only possible cure: it can bring critical mass to support the
development of packages. But I will be really surprised if ever TeX
gets more than 1% of word-processing market.
--
Once again I repeat that these are not necessarily MY opinions, these
are arguments I have came across here in Brazil. I do not want to
convince you that TeX is bad. Instead I want you to pull down these
arguments so that I can use your refutations in the future.
Joel J. Adamson
> Ross Maloney wrote:
>> o results produced are visually unsurpassed.
>
> If you know how to tweak them. Default results produced look like a
> book typeset seventy years ago. Although I personally like the
> defaults, most people to whom I have shown them complained that they
> look "odd", "out of place" or "just ugly". Perhaps MS Word has
> diverted the typographical tastes of people from good practices, I
> dunno.
\usepackage{mathptmx}
I recently showed a table that I prepared in LaTeX to my supervisor,
and he said "I'm torn between looking at the data and noticing how
nice the table is formatted." When I told him that it took me only
seconds to make that table (using a converter that I wrote), he was
even more impressed. Most of our tables around here are made in Word,
and you have to click this, click that and it always ends up comping
out different every time I open it.
>> LaTeX:
>> o automatic numbering of all compnent parts of a document;
>
> Most people I know type the numbers and are happy with it.
Yeah, but when the journal sends back the paper and says "Please use
our standard numbering system: 1, 1.1, 1.1.2, etc" our librarian has
to go back and retype them one-by-one: plenty of opportunity to screw
up and make everybody look bad. (this journal incidentally accepts
LaTeX manuscripts).
>> o type-sets mathematics, algorithms, sequential steps, etc. correctly;
>
> Most people I know will use bitmaps in place of equations, happily.
Dude, how many of those are mathematicians?
> TeX is dying.
You don't know many mathematicians and statisticians, do you? People
like that don't use anything else. Nothing else is worth a damn. I
could point out that a lot of people think Fortran is completely dead,
but a lot of mathematicians I know still use it on a daily basis.
That's just as misinformed as saying that Unix is dying or that "Linux
is on the rise." Unix and its variants, TeX/LaTeX and Emacs have
always appealed to a niche market and they always will: that market
will always be around.
I'm not as surprised as I am disappointed that people are resistant to
using typesetting. I understand though: It's scary looking at a text
file with markup in it. Most people are set in their ways. The
people I work with are very very busy and they don't have time to
learn how to use new stuff -- so much so that they resist learning it
even if there's nothing to learn. I sent my boss a manuscript in
LaTeX, pointed out to him that it's just text and he should edit it
freely, since I have a version control system to mark changes. This
was my way of saying "I'll handle the hard stuff." He emailed back:
"Please send me a Microsoft Word version: I can't handle latex." I
sent him a converted version and he wrote back "the references are not
in Endnote format."
Your comment about "share of the word processing market" is similarly
misinformed: TeX/LaTeX are not word processors. They use a totally
different paradigm. One that, in my mind, is superior.
I don't see people finding Word easy to use: I see them complaining,
having huge problems with EndNote and all this other proprietary stuff
they use. It's not easy to use.
I have complaints about LaTeX, too, and I have difficulty using it.
However (a) I can make those complaints to someone -- who do I email
at Microsoft to request a feature, or get the code to design a
plug-in? -- and (b) if I have difficulty I only have to learn how to
use it better. I tried learning how to use Word better for fifteen
years and I never got any better at it. Word processing doesn't make
sense to me. Now that I've found an alternative, I use it as much as
I can. The other thing that doesn't make sense is scientists and
mathematicians dependent on the wills of a corporation or a market to
get their jobs done effectively. TeX doesn't have to be "successful"
to still be around in ten years. It just has to be good, and it is.
Joel
--
Joel J. Adamson
Biostatistician
Pediatric Psychopharmacology Research Unit
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA 02114
(617) 643-1432
(303) 880-3109
*Getting unexpected output from Word?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sZtriK9rKQ&NR=1
*Try LaTeX: it's free, easy and professional
http://www.edafe.org/latex/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX
http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex
anon k
> Jose Geraldo <jggo...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> I recently showed a table that I prepared in LaTeX to my supervisor,
> and he said "I'm torn between looking at the data and noticing how
> nice the table is formatted." When I told him that it took me only
> seconds to make that table (using a converter that I wrote), he was
> even more impressed. Most of our tables around here are made in Word,
> and you have to click this, click that and it always ends up comping
> out different every time I open it.
However, suppose that you need to insert an extra column in a large
table. Here's one instance where pointing and clicking makes the task
much faster. In the markup, you may have to count out through very
similar-looking entries for each row, hoping that you've inserted your
cell in the right place.
I find that it's easiest to prototype my tables in a spreadsheet for
this reason, and then use cell formulas to generate the LaTeX code.
>>> LaTeX:
>>> o automatic numbering of all compnent parts of a document;
>> Most people I know type the numbers and are happy with it.
>
> Yeah, but when the journal sends back the paper and says "Please use
> our standard numbering system: 1, 1.1, 1.1.2, etc" our librarian has
> to go back and retype them one-by-one: plenty of opportunity to screw
> up and make everybody look bad. (this journal incidentally accepts
> LaTeX manuscripts).
This is a major difficulty for Word users, who often refuse to use the
structured automatic numbering systems and formatting styles. A huge
amount of unnecessary editing seems to go into manually changing
formatting and numbering.
> I sent my boss a manuscript in
> LaTeX, pointed out to him that it's just text and he should edit it
> freely, since I have a version control system to mark changes. This
> was my way of saying "I'll handle the hard stuff." He emailed back:
> "Please send me a Microsoft Word version: I can't handle latex." I
> sent him a converted version and he wrote back "the references are not
> in Endnote format."
In the non-technical sense of the word, it's NOT just 'text'. If it
were, it would be far more legible to the non-tech reader. On the
contrary, LaTeX is text riddled with markup. If you are not accustomed
to coping with footnotes, endnotes and citations mingled in with the
body text, it's not easy to read at all. Even the chapter and section
headings can appear indistinguishable from the rest.
I wonder, though, if LaTeX could fare better by being pretty-printed.
To me, LyX is very much a pretty-printing editor. It'd be good if more
LaTeX-oriented editors allowed something similar, beyond only color-coding.
For example, how about indenting footnotes, enlarging and emboldening
section headings, and so on?
Code-folding (for long footnotes in particular) is also not widely
offered by the 'friendly' editors that low-tech users are most likely to
try.
> Your comment about "share of the word processing market" is similarly
> misinformed: TeX/LaTeX are not word processors. They use a totally
> different paradigm. One that, in my mind, is superior.
It's indeed superior for some things, but not for all. One of the
reasons why mathematically-oriented people like it is because it
accommodates their work well. If you try something like a parallel
translation with multiple footnote sequences, and texts with a lot of
superscripts, subscripts and other localized formatting, it gets very
messy to edit.
> I don't see people finding Word easy to use: I see them complaining,
> having huge problems with EndNote and all this other proprietary stuff
> they use. It's not easy to use.
I agree with you here, but I do see them easily convincing themselves
that they can handle Word, and that they MUST handle Word. There are
also huge institutional support networks to help Word and EndNote users,
but for LaTeX and friends you're often on your own.
I asked my university library why they provide so many classes on
trivial matters like EndNote and Word fundamentals that anyone admitted
to a university should be able to work out for themselves, yet nothing
at all for LaTeX users in spite of there being very many of us who have
trouble with various things from time to time. My letter was forwarded
to the engineering library, where the coordinator of these classes is
based, and he explained that he'd heard of LaTeX, but didn't know how or
where people learn it, nor what they do with it.
It's true that my university is formally in league with Microsoft (so
much so that they announced a decade ago that no one was allowed
non-Windows machines except for Mac-only applications in the Art and
Design School), but I doubt that this kind of response would be at all
uncommon.
> I tried learning how to use Word better for fifteen
> years and I never got any better at it. Word processing doesn't make
> sense to me.
That may be because you were trying to use a word processor for a task
that isn't inherently word processing. Word processing is not needed
all that often in the sciences, is it? It'd be a bit like using Word or
HTML for fine typesetting; they just aren't designed for that. The
market for fine typesetting isn't lucrative enough for big players like
Microsoft to care about.
David Kastrup
> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>> Jose Geraldo <jggo...@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> I recently showed a table that I prepared in LaTeX to my supervisor,
>> and he said "I'm torn between looking at the data and noticing how
>> nice the table is formatted." When I told him that it took me only
>> seconds to make that table (using a converter that I wrote), he was
>> even more impressed. Most of our tables around here are made in Word,
>> and you have to click this, click that and it always ends up comping
>> out different every time I open it.
>
> However, suppose that you need to insert an extra column in a large
> table. Here's one instance where pointing and clicking makes the
> task much faster. In the markup, you may have to count out through
> very similar-looking entries for each row, hoping that you've
> inserted your cell in the right place.
M-x align-current RET
>
> I wonder, though, if LaTeX could fare better by being
> pretty-printed. To me, LyX is very much a pretty-printing editor.
> It'd be good if more LaTeX-oriented editors allowed something
> similar, beyond only color-coding.
>
> For example, how about indenting footnotes, enlarging and
> emboldening section headings, and so on?
>
> Code-folding (for long footnotes in particular) is also not widely
> offered by the 'friendly' editors that low-tech users are most
> likely to try.
Emacs plus AUCTeX does all of that, and more.
>> Your comment about "share of the word processing market" is
>> similarly misinformed: TeX/LaTeX are not word processors. They use
>> a totally different paradigm. One that, in my mind, is superior.
>
> It's indeed superior for some things, but not for all. One of the
> reasons why mathematically-oriented people like it is because it
> accommodates their work well. If you try something like a parallel
> translation with multiple footnote sequences, and texts with a lot
> of superscripts, subscripts and other localized formatting, it gets
> very messy to edit.
Actually, the bigfoot package has been created because having nested
footnotes, partly of 20+ pages, at several nested levels is pretty
much impossible to edit in the _page_ arrangement rather than the
logical order.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
UKTUG FAQ: <URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html>
Juergen Fenn
> A reason given for the widespread use of OFFICE is that it is simple
> (and natural) to use. If this be so, then why are there so many
> instruction courses run on how to use it? Is the degree of computer
> literacy, at the keyboard, greater to drive these TeX components than
> their counterparts from OFFICE (Okay, EndNote is not part of OFFICE
> but the missing piece)?
>
> What is your opinion?
1) TeX and friends are rather little known outside the IT/ maths/
physics world. So ignorance plays an important point here.
2) But even if we could make TeX better known out there, MS Office (or
OOo) are found to be good enough for most purposes by most
users. Most people are not interested in any alternatives (neither
in IT nor in politics or whatever else...). They use what they are
supplied with by their employer. And this is what they want to find
on their computer at home, too. To some 95% of users "computer" is
a synonym for "Windows" or "Winword".
3) Cost doesn't play a role here at all.
Jürgen.
Herbert Schulz
anon k <nos...@nul.nul> wrote:
>
> However, suppose that you need to insert an extra column in a large
> table. Here's one instance where pointing and clicking makes the task
> much faster. In the markup, you may have to count out through very
> similar-looking entries for each row, hoping that you've inserted your
> cell in the right place.
>
Howdy,
Or... use an editor/macro that will insert the extra column for you.
Good Luck,
Herb Schulz
Alan Ristow
> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>> Jose Geraldo <jggo...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>>> LaTeX:
>>>> o automatic numbering of all compnent parts of a document;
>>> Most people I know type the numbers and are happy with it.
>>
>> Yeah, but when the journal sends back the paper and says "Please use
>> our standard numbering system: 1, 1.1, 1.1.2, etc" our librarian has
>> to go back and retype them one-by-one: plenty of opportunity to screw
>> up and make everybody look bad. (this journal incidentally accepts
>> LaTeX manuscripts).
>
> This is a major difficulty for Word users, who often refuse to use the
> structured automatic numbering systems and formatting styles. A huge
> amount of unnecessary editing seems to go into manually changing
> formatting and numbering.
In the last version of Word I used extensively -- Word 2000, perhaps? --
this was a major difficulty in part because Word made it so. Not because
it was difficult to tell Word what you wanted auto-numbered, mind you,
but because it was difficult to keep them displaying the proper values.
Ditto for cross references and the like. I don't know what the status of
these issues is in recent versions, but most folks I know who write
their theses and dissertations using Word manually edit formatting and
numbering because they simply don't trust Word to get it right. At the
same time, they perceive LaTeX as too difficult and time-consuming to
learn....
Alan
Ross Maloney
No offence taken, Jose. All the points you raised a very valid.
Ross
anon k
Yes, all very true, and all also reasons why so many people will not
even try to use LaTeX. The idea of investing early in learning
something like AUCTeX is abhorrent to people, while the idea of chronic
suffering in Word is not. Taking AUCTeX functionality to the 'friendly'
editors could help on that front.
anon k
I used Word for two of my theses, back in Win 3 and Win95 days, and had
no problems with numbering, nor with the feared 'master document'
system. It seems that the flaws in master documents only show up when
you do something that a structured mind would not think of doing, but
which happens a lot in the less structured thinking that people do in
the 'real world'.
The print quality was hardly a top priority for the first of these,
because the document just goes into a dark archive, never to be seen
again. The second went on an open reference shelf for consultation so
there was a lot of battling to make Word print even the common
ligatures! But when one mediocre document stands beside a hundred
really awful ones, the mediocre one looks far better than it really is.
anon k
I used Word for two of my theses, back in Win 3 and Win95 days, and had
no problems with numbering or cross-references, nor with the feared
Gernot Hassenpflug
> Ross Maloney wrote:
>> A reason given for the widespread use of OFFICE is that it is simple
>> (and natural) to use. If this be so, then why are there so many
>> instruction courses run on how to use it? /../
>
> Office is trivially simple for most people to _start_ using. It's
> also set up so that it's easy to learn how to use /../
As you point out below, the culture of Word is in line with the
culture of the overall OS that most people are exposed to: an
apparently simple GUI and the "how" of it all hidden away, and users
encouraged to not go there: marketing is all about the "what you can
do with this tool if you use your imagination" without the "how you
can expand this tool to do the stuff which it yet cannot",
conveniently and purposely keeping users from thinking about exactly
what the tool can and cannot do, and what it is the user might really
want to achieve.
> The instruction courses on how to use it are a quick way to learn a
> lot about it, and to fill in any gaps that are left in what one
> learned by experimenting -- it has a tremendous lot of features.
>
> Using TeX requires a willingness to learn something by reading a
> book /../ It also requires a willingness to look things up /../ And
> it requires a capability to follow instructions without immediate
> feedback /../
>
> In any case, to create a very basic document -- yes, the amount of
> computer literacy required to use TeX is significantly higher /../
> Twenty years ago /../ using a computer at all required a fair bit of
> computer literacy, and just about anyone who could do that would be
> at a level where they'd find TeX reasonably easy. That's not true
> today. Moreover, TeX requires a certain _kind_ of computer literacy
> /../
Today there are too many specializations of knowledge in computing for
any one person to know well unless it is their profession. This
includes the computing technology and the content. My wife is
extremely capable in navigating content, entering data, finding
content, and using the daily resources like weather forecasts and so
on for planning her itenerary (this is Japan I am speaking
about). There is no doubt that the "interface" of the webpages is
extremely well-designed for exactly this purpose. On the other hand,
since in my GNU/linux system I let her use by default (boot up order)
there are not as many visible buttons in the browser interface, she
could not even figure out how to enter a URL (even though the entry
space is there, she had no idea what it's purpose was), what the URL
of Google or some other search engine was, and so on. If something is
hidden more than one level in a menu, forget it. That is the level of
user (not stupidity, no, merely expectation) that uses Word, and that
the training courses are for. And there is no way in hell that such
users can even begin to comprehend what kind of mindset is needed to
use LaTeX and friends successfully.
I even include myself in that group to a large degree, when it comes
to making things like calligraphic fonts work in LaTeX (e.g., zcal,
from the font demonstration file on CTAN) I am amazed what one needs
to think about and be prepared to do in order to get this very very
basic type of function to work. Without someone to teach me (or, in
this case, copy an example) I would certainly not have been able to
realize what I needed to think about. And that repeats over and over
for every little detail in TeX, unless you are familiar with the
internals to a degree that is impossible with closed-source programs.
> What that means is that, even if the amount of computer literacy
> required to get really good scientific papers is about equivalent for
> TeX and Word, the amount of computer literacy required in order to
> _start_ learning how to use TeX is notably higher. And that's a
> barrier.
From my personal experience I very much agree with your post. I also
appreciate that many people reading this newsgroup have very different
personal experiences :-)
--
BOFH excuse #395:
Redundant ACLs.
Gernot Hassenpflug
> I also think there is a lot of FUD regarding what is good technology. Many
> times, when I've suggested LaTeX as a solution, the response I've recieved is
> that it appears to be old fashioned and outdated. There is a perception that if
> the software doesn't have a high end user environment with menus, click'n'drag
> and doesn't integrate easily with everything else, it must be rubbish. The
> interesting point here is that everyone, without exception, that I've managed
> to convince to give LaTeX a honest go, once they have got past the initial
> differences and once they are provided with a good environment (such as emacs
> and auctex) have found it to be a much better environment to work in. Nearly
> all of them have reported that it has in fact saved them lots of time, despite
> not having heaps of menus and gui buttons. Many have reported that the
> automatic numbering of sections, tables, figures etc is enough to make them
> never want to use word again. However, as far as I know, all of them have to
> still use Word from time to time (especially when doing jobs that have multiple
> contributors etc).
Same experience here. I've showed people LaTeX-produced documents and
every single person has expressed admiration for the quality, even
though they admit they would not use LaTeX themselves. GUIs give users
the mistaken impression that all they need to know is "right there" at
their fingertips, and in essence let the program decide the format of
their work in a way that non-GUI programs do not. Perhaps similar to
the difference between watching TV and listening to the radio.
--
BOFH excuse #399:
We are a 100% Microsoft Shop.
Scott Pakin
> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>> our standard numbering system: 1, 1.1, 1.1.2, etc" our librarian has
>> to go back and retype them one-by-one: plenty of opportunity to screw
>> up and make everybody look bad. (this journal incidentally accepts
>> LaTeX manuscripts).
>
>
> This is a major difficulty for Word users, who often refuse to use the
> structured automatic numbering systems and formatting styles. A huge
> amount of unnecessary editing seems to go into manually changing
> formatting and numbering.
I, too, have seen the vast majority of Word users manually type (and retype)
section numbers, figure numbers, table numbers, reference numbers, etc. However,
from experience they (1) get pretty fast at renumbering manually and (2) become
good at estimating accurately how long this task takes. They might know, for
example, that a typical journal-length paper takes, say, an hour to renumber.
In contrast, it's hard for them to estimate how long it would take to learn
LaTeX and it's hard for them to gauge whether that effort would pay off, no
matter what I tell them. Consequently, whenever I point out that they wouldn't
have to renumber and reformat manually if they just used LaTeX they always
protest that it only takes an hour (or whatever) to renumber and they need to
do it only once, before the final paper submission. It's clearly a case of
"better the devil you know than the devil you don't".
-- Scott
Gernot Hassenpflug
> Ross Maloney wrote:
> /../
> But actually few people can code, so this openness is only meaningful
> to a minority. This is something I have personally been facing for
> some time: most of the charm of open-source software is only charming
> to technical-oriented people. The average office guy does not give a
> damn for it.
Agreed. Most users do not think that knowing how computers work is
important for them to use them. I disagree but that's just my
opinion. Furthermore, I believe computers are there to deal with exact
numbers, reproducibility, and systematic processing. Fuzzy,
imaginative and non-systematic processing should be left to the human
brain. Now, GUIs, and especially the "cluttered" valiety, seem to stem
from the idea that the computer can do that part for the person as
well. That to me is a very big misunderstanding, and for marketing a
huge and runaway success (emotive marketing), which I think show up in
all the points you make below:
>> o applicable to production of small to very large documents;
>> o 20 years of specialised document format contributions available.
>
> Most of the features you mention are worth a thousand bucks if you
> have to produce such documents on a regular basis. But if you will
> only produce your course papers or perhaps an eventual thesis, TeX's
> advantages fade quite a bit.
>
> /../
>
>> o many templates are available for creating the presentation;
>
> But they don't include neat background bitmaps or embedded music.
>
>> o figures, tables, pictures, etc. can be inserted where required.
>
> But in PowerPoint (of Impress, for that matter) you can easily make
> them visually. Even graphs!
>
>> A reason given for the widespread use of OFFICE is that it is simple
>> (and natural) to use. If this be so, then why are there so many
>> instruction courses run on how to use it? Is the degree of computer
>> literacy, at the keyboard, greater to drive these TeX components than
>> their counterparts from OFFICE (Okay, EndNote is not part of OFFICE but
>> the missing piece)?
>
> The problem is that people have been conditioned over time to think
> that the mouse is better than the keyboard and that visual interfaces
> are better than text interfaces. The reason why there are so many
> courses teaching Office is not that the program is hard, but that most
> people are sooo stupid. /../
I disagree, it is not stupidity, it is the expectation that marketing
has set for non-expert users, and they have no way to know what they
are not being told. "Automatic backups", "safety", "guarantee",
"virus-checking", "spyware detection"... the list goes on. Business.
--
BOFH excuse #391:
We already sent around a notice about that.
Gernot Hassenpflug
GUI tends to make users think all they need to know is in front of
them. In fact: WYSIAYG (what you see is all you get), plus many users
will not spend the time looking through even those options the GUI
does offer, since inevitably they will be nested several levels deep:
now you have a logical nesting of the GUI to grok as well, which
admittedly can be very intuitive if done right. AUCTeX does not fool
users into a false sense of simplicity, and it is just as simple to
use from a menu point of view until the user feels he needs to find
out how much else is *really* there. Teaching users how to read info
files would go a long way to making them more productive.
--
BOFH excuse #290:
The CPU has shifted, and become decentralized.
Ulrich M. Schwarz
> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>> Jose Geraldo <jggo...@gmail.com> writes:
>> I recently showed a table that I prepared in LaTeX to my supervisor,
>> and he said "I'm torn between looking at the data and noticing how
>> nice the table is formatted." When I told him that it took me only
>> seconds to make that table (using a converter that I wrote), he was
>> even more impressed. Most of our tables around here are made in Word,
>> and you have to click this, click that and it always ends up comping
>> out different every time I open it.
>
> However, suppose that you need to insert an extra column in a large
> table. Here's one instance where pointing and clicking makes the task
> much faster. In the markup, you may have to count out through very
> similar-looking entries for each row, hoping that you've inserted your
> cell in the right place.
Oooooh, and the word wrap, don't forget the word wrap. OTOH, squeezing
visual table data into 80x50 is some hoop to jump through. I agree
with you that it's better to do that sort of thing on an abstraction
layer on top of (La)TeX.
[...]
> In the non-technical sense of the word, it's NOT just 'text'. If it
> were, it would be far more legible to the non-tech reader. On the
> contrary, LaTeX is text riddled with markup. If you are not
> accustomed to coping with footnotes, endnotes and citations mingled in
> with the body text, it's not easy to read at all.
Yes. Frankly, in a pinch, you can extract the text content of a .doc
file with a hex editor, and I guess LaTeX source looks no different to
a Word user.
> Even the chapter
> and section headings can appear indistinguishable from the rest.
>
> I wonder, though, if LaTeX could fare better by being pretty-printed.
> To me, LyX is very much a pretty-printing editor. It'd be good if
> more LaTeX-oriented editors allowed something similar, beyond only
> color-coding.
>
> For example, how about indenting footnotes, enlarging and emboldening
> section headings, and so on?
Yes, but that's encouraging bad practices: You pretty much have to
hardcode the handling. Never mind the parameters, without an insame
amount of semantic analysis of .cls files and friends, you have to
manually tell that \chapter, \section,... are headings, \footnote is a
footnote, etc.pp.
If you have enough functionality to do something useful with that
information, your system is too complex to let the average user define
visual effects for their own logical markup commands. (And I've gone
down that road: Talcum-render had its fair share of "if it's a number,
it's the nth argument, if it's a string, it's a literal, if it's a
function, it's called, and it can also be a list of the above, oh, and
it can have font attributes, too!" that pretty much broke Emacs'
customization facilities in a gazillion places. I know of exactly one
user who defined custom rules. (And yes, I'm pretty confident I had
more than one.))
Never mind the usability nightmare that is differing font sizes and
widths in an editor, which is usually designed for fixed-width fonts.
On the other front, I've tried LyX (OK, ages ago) and µImp, and I
can't wrap my head around the way they go with sub- and superscripts.
Mind you, I can't offer a better alternative if you insist on WYSIWYM.
> Code-folding (for long footnotes in particular) is also not widely
> offered by the 'friendly' editors that low-tech users are most likely
> to try.
Well, usability in the face of complexity is an art that I haven't
seen mastered all that often. You can polish a fractal all you want,
either it's spiky or you've polished off the fractality.
>> Your comment about "share of the word processing market" is similarly
>> misinformed: TeX/LaTeX are not word processors. They use a totally
>> different paradigm. One that, in my mind, is superior.
>
> It's indeed superior for some things, but not for all. One of the
> reasons why mathematically-oriented people like it is because it
> accommodates their work well. If you try something like a parallel
> translation with multiple footnote sequences, and texts with a lot of
> superscripts, subscripts and other localized formatting, it gets very
> messy to edit.
Or some of the more fancy beamer things: list of bullet points on the
left, alerted in turn, for each bullet have pro- and con-bullets on
the right, of course nothing should bounce, you'll have to use
explicit numbering for either side and don't you dare insert another
bullet on the left.
[...]
>
> That may be because you were trying to use a word processor for a task
> that isn't inherently word processing. Word processing is not needed
> all that often in the sciences, is it? It'd be a bit like using Word
> or HTML for fine typesetting; they just aren't designed for that. The
> market for fine typesetting isn't lucrative enough for big players
> like Microsoft to care about.
I don't think I agree with the "big player/not lucrative" argument.
Programs like Framemaker or Xpress do make money or they wouldn't be
around. But I get the impression Microsoft likes to target
mass/consumer markets, they want to sell a million boxes for a hundred
bucks each, not a hundred boxes for a million each.
Ulrich
--
Von wegen "die 80 Superhits der 90er" -- wenn's so viele wären, wäre
ja alles gut. (Erik Meltzer, Arnim Sommer)
-- Das muß "Suppenhits" heißen. Und Konni kann bestimmt bestätigen,
daß man für einen Eintopf nicht gerade die besten Stücke aufhebt.
Brian Blackmore
> It appears to me that ignorance is a big factor in the small up-take of
> the TeX suite, both in academic circles, and more generally in industry,
> government, and business. Document production, and their presentation,
> appears to be dominated by Microsoft OFFICE because little else is
> known. But each person has to be trained (or shown) at some stage how
> to use OFFICE. Has the cost, in wide terms, of that effort been assessed
> and appreciated?
I think in this paragraph alone you refer to several things that we
in the TeX world are used to doing/having automatically, but which
rarely exist in the Word world. Ignorance is key, certainly, but I
don't think it's ignorance about TeX that's really the driving force
behind this; what's perhaps more to blame is the things that we do
with TeX, that you mention, that businesses just don't bother with
any more.
Take, for instance, "[d]ocument production". Businesses don't
produce documents any more. No one cares about technical
documentation. People don't even bother to use forms for
interoffice memos, for email, for web page design, for
presentations. What happens in the workplace is a blend of HTML
Outlook messages together with people that know better and stick
with text, each group having some people that wrap at width-80
columns and some that don't, some that spell check and some that
don't, some that know how to communicate and some that could care
less. Heck, some people don't even know what paragraphs are. If a
business doesn't produce business-like documents, they don't need to
worry about how it's going to happen. People can just pound out
whatever mess they want and that will be good enough.
Thus, if "presentation" isn't even a concern, who cares about Word
versus TeX versus something other? For most users that I've seen,
Word isn't about `presentation' at all. Most Word users don't
understand templates, styles, etc., because they don't really worry
about formatting; if it looks right, it must be right, and a quick
0.75-second glance shows that it looks right so all is well. I
complain to people when their Word documents have inconsistent
formatting, like that two spaces after the period where every other
period is followed by only one. People don't notice when there's a
space at the beginning of their paragraph, but Word happily puts it
there for them to miss.
Users fidget with that system because it is, indeed, what the
employers are effectively giving them to use. If the employer has
no concern for appearance, then most users are happy to oblige. If
the business doesn't provide forms, people are free to do whatever,
and since they think Word is the correct choice for `document
preparation', that's what they use. If the business does provide
forms, they are usually created by the one person who attended the
60 minute conference on Office and the only one `capable' of
creating those `complicated' fill-in things. Sometimes they produce
Excel, sometimes Word, but that's usually about all they can manage.
Users are usually happy to comply if they don't have to change a
thing and can just clicky and type in the info they need.
It gets even worse when companies decide on proprietary interfaces,
because as bad as the user interfaces can get with Office, some
proprietary interfaces are less useful or friendly. This becomes
more of a pain because getting the information into the system is
`arcane' as the keys and options are usually different or limited.
Very few of these systems allow importing, so even users that can
manage to construct reasonable data streams are prevented from doing
so. Mediocrity ensues.
I think the issue is not so much the software, but the propagation
of business environments that consider documentation to be a
liability instead of an asset to profits. If businesses understood
the importance of documentation --- and it's a bit surprising they
don't with the increase appearance of things like Sarbanes Oxley ---
then maybe they'd be willing to hire someone that spent half their
time constructing the appropriate templates, styles, and formatting,
for that business' documents, in a presentable (and reasonable)
format. That would lead to custom styles that were immediately
faster for the user, and the user would be less prone to complain
about things like \author and \date.
Alas, businesses lack sufficient foresight for this sort of thing,
so they're happy to continue accepting bad hyphenation, bad number
(just a typo), bad spelling (just a typo), bad grammar (just a
typo), bad headers and citations (just a typo), bad cross references
(plagiarism doesn't exist any more anyway, does it?), blah blah blah
etc. etc.
You could use a manual or electric typewriter and no one would
notice.
--
Brian Blackmore
blb8 at po dot cwru dot edu
Tim X
>
> TeX is dying. Command-line users are not appearing anew every day. LyX
> is the only possible cure: it can bring critical mass to support the
> development of packages. But I will be really surprised if ever TeX
> gets more than 1% of word-processing market.
>
I hate to admit it, but I think your probably right. People have become
accustomed to GUI WYSI(A)WYG editing and it is unlikely that will change. Lyx
can possibly provide a more GUI experience, but I don't see LaTeX/TeX being a
significant player in the market.
One thing that may be possible is that we could see GUI 'word processors' that
are not tied to a specific format, but rather provide a user friendly interface
to some sort of markup language (what that will be I can't predict), mainly
because of the growing need to produce output in multiple formats, for print,
for on-line, for mobile phones, for conversion to speech, etc. In this
scenario, I expect the format will be closer to TeX than Word (though it will
likely be XML initially as that makes the pointy hared boss comfortable - XML
is the solution, it said so in the in flight magazine and I won't get sacked
for choosing it!).
Tim X
>
> Yes, all very true, and all also reasons why so many people will not even try
> to use LaTeX. The idea of investing early in learning something like AUCTeX is
> abhorrent to people, while the idea of chronic suffering in Word is not.
> Taking AUCTeX functionality to the 'friendly' editors could help on that front.
I didn't discover auctex (or even emacs) until some years after writing my
thesis in LaTeX (using vi). Thesedays, I use auctex a few times a week. I also
use a n emacs mode called muse that uses a wiki like language to do simple
markup (including support for basic tables), which you can then use to generate
TeX, LaTeX, TexInfo, PS, PDF, HTML, XHTML, XML/DocBook. Its a really nice
intermediate point that is useful when you want to produce very simple
documents without having to worry about setting up document classes, loading
specific packages etc. When/if I want to incorporate something into a more
formal document later, I can just insert the LaTeX sources muse produced.
Extremely useful for those monthly reports or project plans or system
documentation etc.
I suspect what is really needed isn't so much training for people to show them
how useful TeX and friends can be, but rather training for people to show them
how to be productive with technology. I'm constantly amazed at the extra time
added to what people are doing by poor application of the technology - the
person who writes a document in 30 mins and then spends 2 hours trying to get
it formatted correctly, the guy crreating tables in excel just to make it
easier to import a table of data into word rather than using a simple markup
system that could handle all the formatting automatically, using clunky
reference/bibliography programs that only partially integrate reliably with
your authoring software, hours spent trying to sync your hand-held, desktop,
laptop and phone when you could have achieved the same result with something
far simpler and then cursing when things fall apart because your overly
technically dominated existance with its user friendliness that protects you
from yourself just doesn't quite gel - all done to stop you from having to
think just a little.
Tim X
Yep, seen that far too many times. I did manage to get my partner to switch
after repeated problems with Word screwing up section numbers, refernces,
tables and figures. She was wary at first and I had to guarantee that if she
didn't like it, I could generate a plain text version which she could import
into Word and format herself.
I setup a Linux laptop, setup a quite customized version of emacs with Auctex
(and preview-latex, thanks David K), a few basic scripts to automate things a
bit and she was off an running. By the end, she was a total convert.
Unfortunately, our relationship didn't last, but I still get the occasional
e-mail with a LaTeX/AucTex/Emacs question, so something stuck.
The only problem she has now is the same I suspect many LaTeX users have - the
dreaded document collaboration - a real pain when your in the 1% minority as
you just know that it won't be your preferred technology thats used as the
basis for the collaboration.
tim
root
Tim,
I have heard of this 'buddy system' before to fostering conversion, with
the same encouraging results. Or is it that I have only heard (others
having only spoken up about) successful attempts. But some how I can't
imagine a 99% failure rate in such efforts, if LaTeX users are 1% of the
document creation populous as has been suggested in this thread. I
know, this is a flagrant use of statistics. But that system does
demonstrate that even those 'from the other side' can be shown the
'errors of their ways'.
Ross
root
A difficulty that I have with this correction process, Scott, is that
once I have finished the 'creation' process I don't like going back and
doing detail work. I have found from bitter experience that I always
overlook something that becomes glaringly obvious afterwards. Such
oversights distract the reader of the document. I find that LaTeX and
its mates tend to make that revision process simpler. Maybe such is a
payback for time spent in learning LaTeX in the first place.
Ross
Alan Ristow
In those versions you might be right. I worked primarily on Macs between
1989 and 1999, so I never had much direct experience with the versions
you used, but on my Macs I never had any trouble with automatic chapter
and section numbering, nor the master document system. Had Word remained
like that there's a good chance I would never have discovered LaTeX and
remained a happy Word user to this day. However, the versions of Word
that started coming out in the mid- to late-'90s pretty well rendered
useless features like auto-numbering and master documents. I know many
people who have abandoned those features, but I can't think of a single
one who actually uses them. I don't think "structured thinking" had
anything to do with it -- my documents were as structured as Word would
allow and, starting about 1997 on both Windows and Mac, it still turned
my documents to hash.
Alan
Joel J. Adamson
> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
> However, suppose that you need to insert an extra column in a large
> table. Here's one instance where pointing and clicking makes the task
> much faster. In the markup, you may have to count out through very
> similar-looking entries for each row, hoping that you've inserted your
> cell in the right place.
Bologna: use AUCTeX, and Emacs' regular expression search and replace
can insert whatever you want -- in a much more versatile way than just
clicking and inserting a column. If I insert a column in Word, it
ALWAYS screws it up in one way or another. If I insert a column in
\LaTeX, it always formats it properly; if there's a formatting
problem, I know what it is right away.
>> I sent my boss a manuscript in
>> LaTeX, pointed out to him that it's just text and he should edit it
>> freely, since I have a version control system to mark changes. This
>> was my way of saying "I'll handle the hard stuff." He emailed back:
>> "Please send me a Microsoft Word version: I can't handle latex." I
>> sent him a converted version and he wrote back "the references are not
>> in Endnote format."
>
> In the non-technical sense of the word, it's NOT just 'text'.
Bull. It's just text. You can open it in a text editor and edit the
text. It's readable on any platform. The "markup" is just more
text. This guy wouldn't have even wanted to use italics -- he's
writing the discussion for a scientific paper.
> For example, how about indenting footnotes, enlarging and emboldening
> section headings, and so on?
AUCTeX strikes again!
> Code-folding (for long footnotes in particular) is also not widely
> offered by the 'friendly' editors that low-tech users are most likely
> to try.
Well then they should learn to use Emacs. Yes, that's my opinion.
>> I don't see people finding Word easy to use: I see them complaining,
>> having huge problems with EndNote and all this other proprietary stuff
>> they use. It's not easy to use.
>
> I agree with you here, but I do see them easily convincing themselves
> that they can handle Word, and that they MUST handle Word. There are
> also huge institutional support networks to help Word and EndNote
> users, but for LaTeX and friends you're often on your own.
>
True for the most part, but a lot of journals want to attract authors
who use LaTeX, and therefore accept manuscripts in LaTeX. Any
mathematically oriented journal would not survive if they only
accepted manuscripts in Word.
>> I tried learning how to use Word better for fifteen
>> years and I never got any better at it. Word processing doesn't make
>> sense to me.
>
> That may be because you were trying to use a word processor for a task
> that isn't inherently word processing.
Huh? A task like writing a paper?
Word processors are fine if you're a secretary, I just don't see them
useful for anything other than writing little notes and memos.
However, people use them for all sorts of things that they are
absolutely terrible for. I see people in my office every day trying
to imitate the templates on grant applications from the NIH & Co., and
every time they open the file it's different. It drives them crazy.
Little do they know...
> Word processing is not needed
> all that often in the sciences, is it? It'd be a bit like using Word
> or HTML for fine typesetting; they just aren't designed for that. The
> market for fine typesetting isn't lucrative enough for big players
> like Microsoft to care about.
Yeah, but they act like they care. Microsoft tries to appeal to a
huge range of users (notice I did not call them consumers), but they
don't fit the bill for someone like me. Microsoft products have
always been crap and they have never served me well. The only reason
I used Microsoft products and office applications of any kind was
because I thought it was my only choice. Now I'm using free software
and I'm overwhelmed with choices.
Joel J. Adamson
> Yes, all very true, and all also reasons why so many people will not
> even try to use LaTeX. The idea of investing early in learning
> something like AUCTeX is abhorrent to people, while the idea of
> chronic suffering in Word is not. Taking AUCTeX functionality to the
> friendly' editors could help on that front.
You have a point here: this is a "frog in the sauce pan" phenomenon.
I realized this morning that the level of computer literacy, even in
people who have graduated from "competitive universities" has dropped
so low that they don't know what it means to "copy" a file. This is a
tragic consequence of fitting computers in to how people live, instead
of requiring them to learn. When I started using computers,
command-line interfaces were the only option. Now, I'm faced with a
research assistant who would rather search for hours for a GUI utility
than learn how to enter a few commands.
Joel J. Adamson
> ...but most folks I know who write their theses and dissertations
> using Word manually edit formatting and numbering because they
> simply don't trust Word to get it right.
I could never trust Word. I could never trust Word to keep things the
way I wanted them until next time I opened the file.
I don't trust OpenOffice Writer -- it's too good of an imitation ;)
Joel J. Adamson
> Agreed. Most users do not think that knowing how computers work is
> important for them to use them. I disagree but that's just my
> opinion. Furthermore, I believe computers are there to deal with exact
> numbers, reproducibility, and systematic processing. Fuzzy,
> imaginative and non-systematic processing should be left to the human
> brain.
This is the antithesis of iPod culture -- people think computers can
fit into how they live their lives -- computers are becoming just
another accessory and the truth is they're not good for those things.
I would much rather have my record collection than an iPod.
Joel J. Adamson
pointing out the appearance of TeX-typeset documents as the main
advantage. I realize this was the main motivation to create TeX, but
there are many other advantages that really get me going:
1) LaTeX has more conveniences than word processors, that actually
work better, for example automatic sectioning of articles
2) AUCTeX has everything that I need to create a document write in
front of me on the keyboard. Using Emacs to create documents is far
superior. What bums me out about having to use a word processor at
work is mostly the process: I feel crippled by a program designed for
lazy people.
3) LaTeX can create documents that would be very very difficult to
create in a word processor; my wife made a crossword puzzle for one of
her classes using LaTeX -- people loved it; perhaps there's something
else you can use, but then we come back to appearance. She got a lot
of compliments.
Joel
Tim X <ti...@nospam.dev.null> writes:
--
David Kastrup
> Jose Geraldo <jggo...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> TeX is dying. Command-line users are not appearing anew every
>> day. LyX is the only possible cure: it can bring critical mass to
>> support the development of packages. But I will be really surprised
>> if ever TeX gets more than 1% of word-processing market.
>
> I hate to admit it, but I think your probably right. People have
> become accustomed to GUI WYSI(A)WYG editing and it is unlikely that
> will change. Lyx can possibly provide a more GUI experience, but I
> don't see LaTeX/TeX being a significant player in the market.
LyX is like soldering with mittens. Saves you burns when you are
inexperienced and not trying to do delicate things. But is likely to
get annoying in the long run.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
UKTUG FAQ: <URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html>
anon k
>> In the non-technical sense of the word, it's NOT just 'text'.
>
> Bull. It's just text. You can open it in a text editor and edit the
> text. ... The "markup" is just more text.
'Text' in English does not mean the same as 'text' in computer-specific
jargon. If you try to tell a computer-illiterate person that you're
dealing with text only, you are lying by using the one word in two
different contexts.
> It's readable on any platform.
You write that as if a typical author cares. It's only the IT support
tech who sticks files into a dozen platforms and cheers when it opens.
The author's too busy with the content to waste time like that, not to
mention that he doesn't use a dozen platforms anyway. The author's
concern is content, not markup. His collaborators think similarly.
None of my collaborators use LaTeX, and eventually ask for a rtf or Word
file to annotate. It's damn annoying, especially since I can't find a
LaTeX-to-rtf converter that works on my machine, so I go via html.
> This guy wouldn't have even wanted to use italics -- he's
> writing the discussion for a scientific paper.
Not all papers are scientific. LaTeX has followers in critical editing
and linguistics too, many of whom are not at all interested in
typesetting mathematics. A great many critical editors are close to
being innumerate, having spent their lives developing an incredible
level of literacy. This does not help anyone's cause when you parrot
"It's just text, it's just text" at them. Critical editors know a good
deal more about text than either of us ever will, and they are right:
it's not just text. Unless, perhaps, your whole life revolves around
computers.
>> For example, how about indenting footnotes, enlarging and emboldening
>> section headings, and so on?
>
> AUCTeX strikes again!
Yes, AUCTeX strikes all the time. It unfortunately strikes itself in
the face when you show a typical Word devotee how good it is. If we
stick with the problem that motivated this thread, viz. why so many
people loyally torment themselves with word processors, one answer is
that AUCTeX actively repels them, and many smaller editors don't do the
required job. Using AUCTeX to promote LaTeX is like showing hypodermic
needles to promote vaccinations.
>> Code-folding (for long footnotes in particular) is also not widely
>> offered by the 'friendly' editors that low-tech users are most likely
>> to try.
>
> Well then they should learn to use Emacs. Yes, that's my opinion.
Both of us know that promulgating that opinion does nothing to persuade
them to adopt LaTeX.
> a lot of journals want to attract authors
> who use LaTeX, and therefore accept manuscripts in LaTeX. Any
> mathematically oriented journal would not survive if they only
> accepted manuscripts in Word.
I have been finding that a fair few journals have crossed over into the
Word domain. In some cases it's because the new editor likes Word and
doesn't want to deal with anything else. In other cases it's because
they can import Word documents into some other publishing or typesetting
package that doesn't handle LaTeX. In some very unfortunate cases the
whole journal is produced in Word.
>>> I tried learning how to use Word better for fifteen
>>> years and I never got any better at it. Word processing doesn't make
>>> sense to me.
>> That may be because you were trying to use a word processor for a task
>> that isn't inherently word processing.
>
> Huh? A task like writing a paper?
There's more than one way to write a paper, or a monograph, or some
other scholarly output. But this is getting off the topic.
Suffice it to say that wordprocessors are not what they once were: now
their formatting capacities overlap with what used to be desktop
publishing, and these formatting capacities distract a large number of
users from composition.
> Word processors are fine if you're a secretary, I just don't see them
> useful for anything other than writing little notes and memos.
I would rather have the secretary in a different role, namely
transcribing and marking up text into LaTeX. This could leave scholars
to work on their actual work rather than on learning this or that aspect
of technology. I would love to go back to the days when I could give a
secretary a manuscript, and she'd turn it into a typescript for me.
These days I'm told that such tasks that are not in her (or 'his/her' as
they now write) job description. And the younger ones say that my
"joined-up handwriting" looks pretty but that they can't read it.
Schools these days. They teach Word in a lot of those schools.
That investment in learning is a big turn-off with LaTeX and AUCTeX, and
even with some of its friendlier editors.
The computer-literate are happy to say "well, just use Notepad if you
want it simple" but such purported 'solutions' only evade the problem:
the markup still interferes with editing and reading the text, and there
is still no separation of the multiple texts (e.g. body, endnotes,
footnotes) that makes raw LaTeX markup scare the technologically challenged.
> However, people use them for all sorts of things that they are
> absolutely terrible for. I see people in my office every day trying
> to imitate the templates on grant applications from the NIH & Co., and
> every time they open the file it's different. It drives them crazy.
> Little do they know...
I don't see this any more because the applications are typed up by
secretaries who can use Word remarkably well.
But I have seen it elsewhere, where scientists were spending time on
paperwork rather than science. To me that is a mis-use of resources but
if the grants are too small to cover a secretary, I guess that it's
reality. Just like the appeal of Word, and the scariness of LaTeX and
LaTeX evangelists.
Durduran
> I have been finding that a fair few journals have crossed over into the
> Word domain. In some cases it's because the new editor likes Word and
> doesn't want to deal with anything else. In other cases it's because
> they can import Word documents into some other publishing or typesetting
> package that doesn't handle LaTeX. In some very unfortunate cases the
> whole journal is produced in Word.
unfortunately, recently I had to deal with a journal which did *not*
announce that it required MS-Word files *and* it had a web-site for
submissions that knew how to simply deal with a pdf file. Half hour after
submission I got the secretary of the editorial office complaining that I
did not submit a word document. I responded pointing out that the system
read my stuff perfectly well and that there were no instructions requiring
a MS-Word file. She refused. So I sent her a tth converted html file that
I imported into Open Office and told her that she can use it. Ofcourse,
she complained about layout. So I told her to use my pdf file. She spent
half day reformatting it instead. I never understood the point of this
since we were even before the review stage.
Another journal, I went through the whole review process with my pdf
files. When it came to producing the proofs, they wanted a word file. I
did the same with an html file, and I received a proof which actually
included tex commands in it! they took my poorly formatted word file and
re-formatted and converted it to tex!
Ross Maloney
Well, I have learnt a lot from this discussion.
The overall thing that I have learnt here is my computer programming
background and outlook affects the way I look at the TeX suite. I
should have seen it, but had not. I don't like to be kept away from the
scene of the action by GUIs, which possibly explains why I have this
dislike for word processors. I tend to write LaTeX markup as if it was
structured computer code with indenting, use of spaces to spread things
out so that editing is easier, use of line spaces to group related
statements (for example, those relating to a figure, table, etc.), I am
a little slack when looking for typing errors which can be cought by
'the compiler', etc. This to me is a natural way to do things and time
effective, but in reflection, it has been born out of bad experience
with the alternative approach. These are not 'skills' that are wide
spread in the populous.
I find, and what others have here related, is that understanding is not
wide spread. People responsible for data collection are unable to
obtain facts from it other than what they already provide. Others, who
use those facts, are not demanding that further information be extracted
for they do not look no further. In the context of this discussion -
what is on the GUI is all that is available, and if you want more, then
you must be strange. In effect, the age of enlightenment that the
Internet offers has been effectively offset by commercial interests.
Education to enable people to think beyond that imposed box is beginning
to appear wanting - but not according to the data. There appears to be
a loop here. Why was I not told that this was available? Why did you
not ask? Education, or lack there of, appears to underlie the comments
which have come forward in this thread. The implications of that could
be considered worrying.
Ross
Turgut Durduran
> absolutely terrible for. I see people in my office every day trying
> to imitate the templates on grant applications from the NIH & Co., and
> every time they open the file it's different. It drives them crazy.
> Little do they know...
yet NIH still takes taxpayer's money and pushes people to buy more and
more expensive, bloated software to apply for a grant. they did that with
the MS-Word templates, they are doing that with the electronic submission
software. there needs to be a coherent, effective movement to demand that
taxpayer's money is not spent on anything were there is a free and
equally capable alternative. equal access etc should become "access via
all OSes" as much as it is otherwise etc.
just rambling.
ugdc
Durduran
> good at estimating accurately how long this task takes. They might know, for
> example, that a typical journal-length paper takes, say, an hour to renumber.
> In contrast, it's hard for them to estimate how long it would take to learn
> LaTeX and it's hard for them to gauge whether that effort would pay off, no
> matter what I tell them.
eventhough that is true that it has for them to gauge it, I do not see how
LaTeX is any more difficult than MS-Word is. Sure, if you do not actually
learn and go about manually numbering stuff, moving things around one by
one, it is easy to get going, but equal amount of LaTeX knowledge is also
very easy to acquire. just download a simple document, forget that it
looks like "code" and think in english. if you want to bold-face
something, well, try to use that.
ugdc
Durduran
is dying. Watching this group tells me otherwise. Every other day there
are new packages posted to CTAN, amazing things like perltex come out.
Everytime adobe releases new features for pdf files, they are picked up as
a LaTeX package etc. It seems to me that within the relatively small
community, LaTeX is still flourishing.
Gernot Hassenpflug
> I didn't discover auctex (or even emacs) until some years after writing my
> thesis in LaTeX (using vi). Thesedays, I use auctex a few times a week. I also
> use a n emacs mode called muse that uses a wiki like language to do simple
> markup (including support for basic tables), which you can then use to generate
> TeX, LaTeX, TexInfo, PS, PDF, HTML, XHTML, XML/DocBook. Its a really nice
> intermediate point that is useful when you want to produce very simple
Thanks for that, I'd heard about Muse for wiki purposes, but had no
idea it gave the flexibility you write above. Will definitely try out
those capabilities.
--
BOFH excuse #15:
temporary routing anomaly
Gernot Hassenpflug
> Scott Pakin wrote:
>> anon k wrote:
>>
>>> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yeah, but when the journal sends back the paper and says "Please use
>>>> our standard numbering system: 1, 1.1, 1.1.2, etc" our librarian has
>>>> to go back and retype them one-by-one: plenty of opportunity to screw
>>>> up and make everybody look bad. (this journal incidentally accepts
>>>> LaTeX manuscripts).
>>> /../
> A difficulty that I have with this correction process, Scott, is that
> once I have finished the 'creation' process I don't like going back
> and doing detail work. I have found from bitter experience that I
> always overlook something that becomes glaringly obvious afterwards.
> Such oversights distract the reader of the document. I find that
> LaTeX and its mates tend to make that revision process simpler. Maybe
> such is a payback for time spent in learning LaTeX in the first place.
Does Word even have a "comment out" command? One of the great things
about markup languages is that the input and output *are*
different. It is so easy to do quick and dirty editing of the input
without actually having to delete anything. In a WYSIWYG editor you
are forced (unless I am mistaken) to work with the de facto final
document, no separation possible (revision and collaboration tracking
notwithstanding, since they do affect the formatting in real time).
--
BOFH excuse #217:
The MGs ran out of gas.
Gernot Hassenpflug
> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>
/../
>
> 'Text' in English does not mean the same as 'text' in
> computer-specific jargon. If you try to tell a computer-illiterate
> person that you're dealing with text only, you are lying by using the
> one word in two different contexts.
Agreed, people need to be taught what that difference is, and why the
CS "text" is such a powerful thing. Completely unstructured text BTW
is pretty meaningless in any context.
>> It's readable on any platform.
>
> You write that as if a typical author cares. It's only the IT support
> tech who sticks files into a dozen platforms and cheers when it
> opens. The author's too busy with the content to waste time like that,
> not to mention that he doesn't use a dozen platforms anyway. The
> author's concern is content, not markup. His collaborators think
> similarly.
I am not sure I understand you here: if an "author" needs to have the
structure of his document in his head (which let's face it he has to)
then he still needs to do some clicking in Word to make that structure
apparent (which it does become, graphically, but only semantically if
the cursor is on the text and thus the "status" of that piece seen
explained in the various menu bar items). Instead of clicking, markup
can be put into the text, so semantically the differentiation is
always visible, and with font-locking/highlighting and AUCTeX even
graphical representation is possible.
And, as I wrote before, the vast advantage of having different input
and output documents.
> None of my collaborators use LaTeX, and eventually ask for a rtf or
> Word file to annotate. It's damn annoying, especially since I can't
> find a LaTeX-to-rtf converter that works on my machine, so I go via
> html.
Annotation is indeed a problem in LaTeX (I use the latexdiff Perl
scripts, for now) but annotation is in no way the same as major
editing and revision.
>> a lot of journals want to attract authors
>> who use LaTeX, and therefore accept manuscripts in LaTeX. Any
>> mathematically oriented journal would not survive if they only
>> accepted manuscripts in Word.
>
> I have been finding that a fair few journals have crossed over into
> the Word domain. In some cases it's because the new editor likes Word
> and doesn't want to deal with anything else. In other cases it's
> because they can import Word documents into some other publishing or
> typesetting package that doesn't handle LaTeX. In some very
> unfortunate cases the whole journal is produced in Word.
That is indeed the case I have found too. I don't like it either, but
journals obviously have the right to take whatever proprietary tools
they want, and to force their contributing authors to use them. AFAIK
from the journals I know that have done this, one can still send in
text/graphics and they will format this, since they have the templates
and have to massage everyone's Word document anyway.
> I would rather have the secretary in a different role, namely
> transcribing and marking up text into LaTeX. This could leave
> scholars to work on their actual work rather than on learning this or
> that aspect of technology. I would love to go back to the days when I
> could give a secretary a manuscript, and she'd turn it into a
> typescript for me. These days I'm told that such tasks that are not in
> her (or 'his/her' as they now write) job description. And the younger
> ones say that my "joined-up handwriting" looks pretty but that they
> can't read it. Schools these days. They teach Word in a lot of those
> schools.
:-) The good old days!
--
BOFH excuse #330:
quantum decoherence
Gernot Hassenpflug
> anon k <nos...@nul.nul> writes:
>
>> Yes, all very true, and all also reasons why so many people will not
>> even try to use LaTeX. The idea of investing early in learning
>> something like AUCTeX is abhorrent to people, while the idea of
>> chronic suffering in Word is not. Taking AUCTeX functionality to the
>> friendly' editors could help on that front.
>
> You have a point here: this is a "frog in the sauce pan" phenomenon.
>
>
> I realized this morning that the level of computer literacy, even in
> people who have graduated from "competitive universities" has dropped
> so low that they don't know what it means to "copy" a file. This is a
> tragic consequence of fitting computers in to how people live, instead
> of requiring them to learn. When I started using computers,
> command-line interfaces were the only option. Now, I'm faced with a
> research assistant who would rather search for hours for a GUI utility
> than learn how to enter a few commands.
I'm guilty of much the same, shame on my education. A lot of people
are simply not willing to make their own picture out of read text
(man, help pages), they want an explanatory picture right away. Heck,
even the mainstream school children's books on history, geography and
so on use manga now here in Japan. If it's not visual and immediately
accessible, it must be bad!
--
BOFH excuse #70:
nesting roaches shorted out the ether cable
David Kastrup
Let's not forget the number of TeX engines and formats that have
recently come into being and/or actual development and that address
new challenges like Unicode input encodings and Opentype fonts and PDF
output.
--
David Kastrup
Lvood
> I used Word for two of my theses, back in Win 3 and Win95 days, and had
> no problems with numbering, nor with the feared 'master document'
> system. It seems that the flaws in master documents only show up when
> you do something that a structured mind would not think of doing, but
> which happens a lot in the less structured thinking that people do in
> the 'real world'.
Hi anon k,
when I tried to write projects reports of not more than 30 pages with
Word 97, numbering of figures and tables was a big problem. I spent
whole nights in trying to fix what Word hat messed up and finally
entered figure numbers by hand at the end, cause word distributed them
randomly when inserting a new figure in the middle of the document.
However, from my experience Office XP and Office 2003 are mostly
stable and reliable for this purpose.
My colleague recently wrote his thesis (240 pages) with Word 2003 and
he had surprisingly few problems, even if the document was more than
80 MB large..
Nonetheless I won't trust word but am writing my Ph. D. thesis (as I
did with my master thesis) with pdfLaTeX.
Martin
Tim X
>
> Word processors are fine if you're a secretary, I just don't see them
> useful for anything other than writing little notes and memos.
> However, people use them for all sorts of things that they are
> absolutely terrible for. I see people in my office every day trying
> to imitate the templates on grant applications from the NIH & Co., and
> every time they open the file it's different. It drives them crazy.
> Little do they know...
>
This rang a loud bell for me. A while ago at work, one of my more burocratic
and boring co-workers convinced management that the solution to all our
problems was to adopt PRINC2 project management. He produced a heap of word
templates that were now mandatory for all documentation.
I immediately took the templates and converted them into LaTeX templates using
a combination of plain text files, some emacs macros and emacs skeleton mode
definitions.
A little while later, one of my co-workers was stressing out as he had a
project board meeting and had spent the whole morning trying to get his
documents to format correctly using the word templates. He had spent nearly 4
hours and the meeting was only a bit over 60 minutes away. I told him to send
me his word documents. I used 'wv' to convert them to text, cut out all the
crap, ran my emacs stuff and had the documents back to him correctly formatted
and printed within 45 minutes.
At the meeting, the pointy haired boss responsible for these word templates was
initially extremely pleased. However, when he found out that LaTeX had been
used instead of word and his templates, he completely changed his position and
attacked my co-worker for producing documents with the incorrect font.
This wasn't the end of the story. The project director actually
thought the documents were better and easier to read and actually preferred PDF
format (because he thought there was less chance of the documents being
'accidently' changed in the future. While we didn't get a full conversion of
everyone to LaTeX, we did at least manage to get a change in policy that now
requires project documentation to be presented/archived in PDF format rather
than as word documents, which I view as at least a partial win.
I'm now seriously thinking about creating a web app that staff can use to fill
in the boxes and click a button to have nicely formatted, organisation template
compliant, pdf documents returned, plus get the benefit of consistent archiving
of project documents and allow re-use of textual elements to reduce the time
spent documenting the project. I'm seriously considering using LaTeX at the
backend to produce the documents and writing it in common lisp. this isn't
because it is the best solution technically, but because LaTeX and CL are two
technologies I like to use and because I would really like to make something
staff find very useful, but based on technology they think is no good simply
because it has been around (and its not Java or XML). Some of the ideas I'm
considering are based on the concepts used in the texproject package, which
show the potential power of using TeX as a declarative language and the wealth
of useful content that can be produced. all I really need to do is squeeze out
the time to do it.
Tim X
>
> Another journal, I went through the whole review process with my pdf
> files. When it came to producing the proofs, they wanted a word file. I
> did the same with an html file, and I received a proof which actually
> included tex commands in it! they took my poorly formatted word file and
> re-formatted and converted it to tex!
Thanks! After a frustrating days work, I read this and laughed out loud -
sometimes you need stuff like this to remind you how rediculous and
insignificant so much of what we do is and that common sense is far less common
than we would like! Far better to laugh, shake your head and move on.
Tim X
> Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> writes:
>
>> Agreed. Most users do not think that knowing how computers work is
>> important for them to use them. I disagree but that's just my
>> opinion. Furthermore, I believe computers are there to deal with exact
>> numbers, reproducibility, and systematic processing. Fuzzy,
>> imaginative and non-systematic processing should be left to the human
>> brain.
>
> This is the antithesis of iPod culture -- people think computers can
> fit into how they live their lives -- computers are becoming just
> another accessory and the truth is they're not good for those things.
> I would much rather have my record collection than an iPod.
>
Oh yes! I still miss buying a new album and spending the first hour sitting on
the lounge, listening and reading/appreciating the album cover. something just
isn't the same with CDs, even when they have a little book/fold out inside. I
think the CD completely killed cover art.
Tim X
Hi Ross, I think we come from similar places as I find the same.
However, its quite remarkable how much what you wrote can sound like my
grandfather if you just replace the references to computers with ones to latin
and ancient greek!
David Kastrup
> Ross Maloney <rmat...@iinet.net.au> writes:
>
>> The overall thing that I have learnt here is my computer
>> programming background and outlook affects the way I look at the
>> TeX suite.
>
> Hi Ross, I think we come from similar places as I find the same.
> However, its quite remarkable how much what you wrote can sound like
> my grandfather if you just replace the references to computers with
> ones to latin and ancient greek!
Actually, it is not remarkable. If you take a look at power users of
LaTeX and/or Emacs (meaning that they write packages themselves)
_without_ a significant technical background, you'll invariably find
them meddling in ancient languages.
Geeks evolved long before the advent of computers. Maybe computers
actually detract geeks from procuring lasting values to society and
culture as a whole while the majority of humanity has done little
except sustain and procreate.
--
David Kastrup
Ross Maloney
As reinforcement to this volume/effort argument. My PhD is 421 pages in
length using 12,11 and 10 point fonts were appropriate, and double
spaced. It has 49 tables, 81 figures, a couple of algorithms, and the
occasional equation thrown in for good measure. It is all
cross-referenced, both from the content lists and internally, so that
all references are a mouse-click away from view. Of coure is was
written using pdfLaTeX. It is 3.5 MB in length (although my clever
university when putting it into their digtal library had it come out as
3.0 MB due to cutting-off the page thumbnails - doesn't Word have
thumbnails?).
Ross
Lars Madsen
>
> As reinforcement to this volume/effort argument. My PhD is 421 pages in
> length using 12,11 and 10 point fonts were appropriate, and double
> spaced. It has 49 tables, 81 figures, a couple of algorithms, and the
> occasional equation thrown in for good measure. It is all
> cross-referenced, both from the content lists and internally, so that
> all references are a mouse-click away from view. Of coure is was
> written using pdfLaTeX. It is 3.5 MB in length (although my clever
> university when putting it into their digtal library had it come out as
> 3.0 MB due to cutting-off the page thumbnails - doesn't Word have
> thumbnails?).
>
word cannot do PDF (adobe didn't allow M$ to add it to Word, instead people have
to use a plugin)
--
/daleif (remove RTFSIGNATURE from email address)
LaTeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
LaTeX book: http://www.imf.au.dk/system/latex/bog/ (in Danish)
Remember to post minimal examples, see URL below
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=minxampl
http://www.minimalbeispiel.de/mini-en.html
Joel J. Adamson
> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>
>>> In the non-technical sense of the word, it's NOT just 'text'.
>>
>> Bull. It's just text. You can open it in a text editor and edit the
>> text. ... The "markup" is just more text.
>
> 'Text' in English does not mean the same as 'text' in
> computer-specific jargon. If you try to tell a computer-illiterate
> person that you're dealing with text only, you are lying by using the
> one word in two different contexts.
This guy's not computer-illiterate. He's been using computers longer
than I've been alive. Nevertheless he does see it as a waste of
time. I have a different view because using LaTeX actually saves me
time, particularly because I use Emacs.
>> It's readable on any platform.
>
> You write that as if a typical author cares. It's only the IT support
> tech who sticks files into a dozen platforms and cheers when it
> opens. The author's too busy with the content to waste time like that,
> not to mention that he doesn't use a dozen platforms anyway. The
> author's concern is content, not markup. His collaborators think
> similarly.
Well, if I'm using Linux, and my collaborator is using Windows, then
this is actually *very* important.
>> This guy wouldn't have even wanted to use italics -- he's
>> writing the discussion for a scientific paper.
>
> Not all papers are scientific.
Well, this one is, and therefore relevant to my example.
> Unless, perhaps, your whole life revolves
> around computers.
My point about "it's just text" is that people open a .tex file and
think that something has gone wrong. People look at me using a
terminal emulator and think that something has gone wrong! My point
of saying "it's just text" is that you can just edit the text. You
don't need to worry about formatting or anything else -- you just
write ;)
>>>> I tried learning how to use Word better for fifteen
>>>> years and I never got any better at it. Word processing doesn't make
>>>> sense to me.
>>> That may be because you were trying to use a word processor for a task
>>> that isn't inherently word processing.
>>
>> Huh? A task like writing a paper?
>
> There's more than one way to write a paper, or a monograph, or some
> other scholarly output. But this is getting off the topic.
You've totally missed the point here: I am not using LaTeX for
something that a word processor would inherently be bad at; I can, in
some cases, use it as a substitute for --- a better alternative to ---
a word processor.
>> Word processors are fine if you're a secretary, I just don't see them
>> useful for anything other than writing little notes and memos.
>
> I would rather have the secretary in a different role, namely
> transcribing and marking up text into LaTeX.
Hey, now you're on to something. This is the approach that I have
suggested in my office several times.
> But I have seen it elsewhere, where scientists were spending time on
> paperwork rather than science. To me that is a mis-use of resources
> but if the grants are too small to cover a secretary, I guess that
> it's reality. Just like the appeal of Word, and the scariness of
> LaTeX and LaTeX evangelists.
Well, you clearly don't see situations like I do, when every Wednesday
my colleague (another statistician) goes up to the big man's office to
show him a set of results, and the guy critiques how a Word document
is formatted, saying "You need the margins tighter here" and "this
should be bold and italic" --- completely ignoring the science. That
to me is a waste of everybody's time. He's told me of meetings that
went half-an-hour long because the Chief was showing him how to do
things in Word that he didn't even know how to do himself. And this
guy I'm referring to is a busy man, with patients to see.
If everybody just wrote up text and gave it to our librarian, it would
be an easier world all around.
Joel J. Adamson
The biggest complaint about the new NIH "grants.gov" protocol was that
it requires people to be using Windows --- we all use Macintosh or
(just me) Linux. I think it's understandable for them to require,
it's just ridiculous --- scientists should be above the demands of
corporations (although they rarely have been in history).
Joel J. Adamson
> Does Word even have a "comment out" command?
It has "hidden text," that for some reason always showed up when I
sent documents to other people.
Joel J. Adamson
As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
Unix.
Boris Veytsman
TX> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:14:29 +1000
TX> I'm now seriously thinking about creating a web app that staff can
TX> use to fill in the boxes and click a button to have nicely
TX> formatted, organisation template compliant, pdf documents
TX> returned, plus get the benefit of consistent archiving of project
TX> documents and allow re-use of textual elements to reduce the time
TX> spent documenting the project.
We did a project like this in 2000. It is described here:
@Article{ReportGeneration07,
author = {Boris Veytsman and Maria Shmilevich},
title = {Automatic Report Generation with {W}eb, {\TeX} and {SQL}},
journal = {TUGboat},
year = 2007,
volume = 28,
number = 1,
pages = {77--79},
note = {\url{https://www.tug.org/members/TUGboat/tb28-1/tb88veytsman-report.pdf}}
}
--
Good luck
-Boris
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
anon k
> anon k <nos...@nul.nul> writes:
>
>> Joel J. Adamson wrote:
>>
>>>> In the non-technical sense of the word, it's NOT just 'text'.
>>> Bull. It's just text. You can open it in a text editor and edit the
>>> text. ... The "markup" is just more text.
>> 'Text' in English does not mean the same as 'text' in
>> computer-specific jargon. If you try to tell a computer-illiterate
>> person that you're dealing with text only, you are lying by using the
>> one word in two different contexts.
>
> This guy's not computer-illiterate. He's been using computers longer
> than I've been alive. Nevertheless he does see it as a waste of
> time. I have a different view because using LaTeX actually saves me
> time, particularly because I use Emacs.
I wasn't talking about any particular guy so I haven't much idea whom
you're talking about. Whoever he is, he doesn't represent the vast
numbers of scholars I know who don't want to see markup. They want to
do something more akin to editing a typescript or galley proof.
From where I stand, I'd definitely like to see a mainstream editor that
displays LaTeX like a typescript. Something like Notepad++, perhaps,
but with footnotes and endnotes appearing in a separate window. With
and editor like that, I think I'd have a good chance at winning a couple
of converts.
>>>>> I tried learning how to use Word better for fifteen
>>>>> years and I never got any better at it. Word processing doesn't make
>>>>> sense to me.
>>>> That may be because you were trying to use a word processor for a task
>>>> that isn't inherently word processing.
>>> Huh? A task like writing a paper?
>> There's more than one way to write a paper, or a monograph, or some
>> other scholarly output. But this is getting off the topic.
>
> You've totally missed the point here: I am not using LaTeX for
> something that a word processor would inherently be bad at; I can, in
> some cases, use it as a substitute for --- a better alternative to ---
> a word processor.
Oh, I see now. I had mistaken this thread as being about why the world
at large resists LaTeX even when they admit to comprehending its
wonderful benefits. Had I known that it was about you alone, it'd have
been obvious that all other discussion was irrelevant.
anon k
I don't trust it with my current projects, either. Word's basic
functionality has become less robust with every version (the policy is
apparently to add whimsical and thought-saving features rather than
improving core features and adding labor-saving ones). I had long stuck
with it because, in my workplace, people trade Word documents all the
time. But Word has never been able to combine floating figures,
footnotes, body text and tables reliably, and my work now involves a lot
more of this than it used to.
There is the serious downside of not being able to e-mail a Word file to
a collaborator. We instead mark up paper printouts. That's part of the
price that one pays for using LaTeX.
On the bonus side, people do admire the typesetting, even people who
know don't know enough typography to precisely describe what they are
seeing. They just know that the page looks calm and legible and that it
doesn't tire their eyes so quickly.
And even with that, they still persist with Word. Part of the reason is
of course that my university is in one of those academic alliances with
Microsoft, so faculty and staff get Word licenses at no local cost.
Randy Yates
> [...]
> There is the serious downside of not being able to e-mail a Word file
> to a collaborator. We instead mark up paper printouts. That's part
> of the price that one pays for using LaTeX.
No, not really. That's what version control systems, especially those
that operate over the web such as subversion, are for.
My collaborators can use subversion to checkin/update my LaTeX
document (if they wanted to) from across the continent. THey can also
view (via an HTTPD svn module) the latest checked in documents right
on the web,
--
% Randy Yates % "She has an IQ of 1001, she has a jumpsuit
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % on, and she's also a telephone."
%%% 919-577-9882 %
%%%% <ya...@ieee.org> % 'Yours Truly, 2095', *Time*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr
Durduran
> Thanks for that, I'd heard about Muse for wiki purposes, but had no
> idea it gave the flexibility you write above. Will definitely try out
> those capabilities.
I also use it. It is good for keeping track of all the files I create,
creating simple reports, web-sites, blog entries, etc.
turgut
Durduran
> journals obviously have the right to take whatever proprietary tools
> they want, and to force their contributing authors to use them.
I am not so sure that it is so obvious all the time. For example, if *I*
am forced to purchase MS-Office in order to submit my research, some
federal funding is going to pay for that either through the overheads that
I would pay to my department or directly from my federal grants. NIH is
forcing journals to let authors deposit their papers that came out of
federal funding in open databases, in a similar vein, I think NIH and
other agencies should force journals (well, they need to start practicing
that themselves first) to accept formats that do not require this
additional cost of taxpayer's money. The requirement to go with
cheaper/free version of somethign with equivalent capabilities should be
the norm and not exception.
ugdc
Durduran
> Turgut Durduran <durd...@web-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>
>> On 2007-07-10, Joel J. Adamson <jada...@partners.org> wrote:
>>> absolutely terrible for. I see people in my office every day trying
>>> to imitate the templates on grant applications from the NIH & Co., and
>>> every time they open the file it's different. It drives them crazy.
>>> Little do they know...
>>
>> yet NIH still takes taxpayer's money and pushes people to buy more and
>> more expensive, bloated software to apply for a grant. they did that with
>> the MS-Word templates, they are doing that with the electronic submission
>> software. there needs to be a coherent, effective movement to demand that
>> taxpayer's money is not spent on anything were there is a free and
>> equally capable alternative. equal access etc should become "access via
>> all OSes" as much as it is otherwise etc.
>
> The biggest complaint about the new NIH "grants.gov" protocol was that
> it requires people to be using Windows --- we all use Macintosh or
> (just me) Linux. I think it's understandable for them to require,
> it's just ridiculous --- scientists should be above the demands of
> corporations (although they rarely have been in history).
yes, and then universities and NIH had to come up with this ridiculous way
of allowing (insecure) access to a windows server so that we can log in
and use the crappy software there. NSF, DoD and many others have been
accepting online grant applications without this crap.
Randy Yates
> Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>
>> I will break netiquette and post without a quote. I do not think LaTeX/TeX
>> is dying. Watching this group tells me otherwise. Every other day there
>> are new packages posted to CTAN, amazing things like perltex come out.
>> Everytime adobe releases new features for pdf files, they are picked up as
>> a LaTeX package etc. It seems to me that within the relatively small
>> community, LaTeX is still flourishing.
>
> As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
> Unix.
Is Microsoft growling about patent infringements for just a niche
market? Or was that a joke?
--A very happy FC6 user
--
% Randy Yates % "How's life on earth?
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % ... What is it worth?"
%%% 919-577-9882 % 'Mission (A World Record)',
%%%% <ya...@ieee.org> % *A New World Record*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr
Robert Heller
>
> jada...@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson) writes:
>
> > Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
> >
> >> I will break netiquette and post without a quote. I do not think LaTeX/TeX
> >> is dying. Watching this group tells me otherwise. Every other day there
> >> are new packages posted to CTAN, amazing things like perltex come out.
> >> Everytime adobe releases new features for pdf files, they are picked up as
> >> a LaTeX package etc. It seems to me that within the relatively small
> >> community, LaTeX is still flourishing.
> >
> > As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
> > Unix.
>
> Is Microsoft growling about patent infringements for just a niche
> market? Or was that a joke?
Every niche market represents a few fractions of a percent of the market
not owned by Microsoft. Microsoft is 'obsesed' with owning 100% of the
market, even if it makes no business sense. No one is really claiming
that Microsoft is 'sane'. I suspect that the people at Microsoft
realize that MS-Word's typesetting quality is poor. So long as (better
quality) TeX/LaTeX document are 'out there' there is always the
possibity that someone will notice how poor MS-Word's typesetting
quality really is and *may* be motivated to try out this TeX/LaTeX
thing, strange as it is (from a word-processing POV).
Part of Microsoft's 'mentality' is derived from Bill Gates's mentality --
there are various stories of Bill Gates and some of his 'crazy'
behavours (like storming into an Intel BOD meeting and ranting and
raving when Intel announced that it was going to provide open-source
drivers for their (at the time) new WiFi chipset). Part of it is just
to present a uniform front WRT 'open source' -- Microsoft cannot condem
Linux and embrace TeX/LaTeX without looking 'stupid'.
>
> --A very happy FC6 user
>
--
Robert Heller -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar!
Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database
hel...@deepsoft.com -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk
anon k
> anon k <nos...@nul.nul> writes:
>> [...]
>> There is the serious downside of not being able to e-mail a Word file
>> to a collaborator. We instead mark up paper printouts. That's part
>> of the price that one pays for using LaTeX.
>
> No, not really. That's what version control systems, especially those
> that operate over the web such as subversion, are for.
>
> My collaborators can use subversion to checkin/update my LaTeX
> document (if they wanted to) from across the continent. THey can also
> view (via an HTTPD svn module) the latest checked in documents right
> on the web,
How do you work around their refusal to use LaTeX?
Randy Yates
Umm, oops. Got the context wrong - sorry!
--
% Randy Yates % "Watching all the days go by...
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % Who are you and who am I?"
Gernot Hassenpflug
> Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> writes:
>
>
>> Does Word even have a "comment out" command?
>
> It has "hidden text," that for some reason always showed up when I
> sent documents to other people.
:-) Fantastic! Just the opposite of what commented text is supposed to do.
--
BOFH excuse #249:
Unfortunately we have run out of bits/bytes/whatever. Don't worry, the next supply will be coming next week.
Gernot Hassenpflug
> At Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:29:56 -0400 Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> jada...@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson) writes:
>>
>> > Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>> >
>> >> I will break netiquette and post without a quote. I do not think LaTeX/TeX
>> >> is dying. Watching this group tells me otherwise. Every other day there
>> >> are new packages posted to CTAN, amazing things like perltex come out.
>> >> Everytime adobe releases new features for pdf files, they are picked up as
>> >> a LaTeX package etc. It seems to me that within the relatively small
>> >> community, LaTeX is still flourishing.
>> >
>> > As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
>> > Unix.
>>
>> Is Microsoft growling about patent infringements for just a niche
>> market? Or was that a joke?
>
> Every niche market represents a few fractions of a percent of the market
> not owned by Microsoft. Microsoft is 'obsesed' with owning 100% of the
> market, even if it makes no business sense. No one is really claiming
I think it is more that the initial state of health of a company --
existence -- is replaced by a different indicator when the company
increases in size: growth. This growth has market share as a major
sub-indicator, so a lot of effort goes into making market share
fractional points larger. Which becomes more difficult as less
market-share is left "untaken".
--
BOFH excuse #186:
permission denied
Gernot Hassenpflug
OK, I had to look up what "NIH" means. I believe the situation wrt
journal funding is vastly different from country to country, so my
generalization was misplaced. Sorry about that.
On a related note, the Japanese tax accounting programs (there are
two, and whatever accountant you choose, he will be using one of
those) require MS Windows to run, so no matter what, the government is
forcing every company to buy at least one copy of MS Windows.
--
BOFH excuse #44:
bank holiday - system operating credits not recharged
Randy Yates
> At Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:29:56 -0400 Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> jada...@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson) writes:
>>
>> > Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>> >
>> >> I will break netiquette and post without a quote. I do not think LaTeX/TeX
>> >> is dying. Watching this group tells me otherwise. Every other day there
>> >> are new packages posted to CTAN, amazing things like perltex come out.
>> >> Everytime adobe releases new features for pdf files, they are picked up as
>> >> a LaTeX package etc. It seems to me that within the relatively small
>> >> community, LaTeX is still flourishing.
>> >
>> > As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
>> > Unix.
>>
>> Is Microsoft growling about patent infringements for just a niche
>> market? Or was that a joke?
>
> Every niche market represents a few fractions of a percent of the market
> not owned by Microsoft. Microsoft is 'obsesed' with owning 100% of the
> market, even if it makes no business sense. No one is really claiming
> that Microsoft is 'sane'.
From the amount of activity I've seen in the linux realm (have you
seen the breadth of variety of new distros that are available
lately?), I'd say this is not the reason, i.e., there REALLY IS a
growing market for linux, and MS is starting to worry. And I'm happier
than a pig after a hot July rain about it.
--
% Randy Yates % "The dreamer, the unwoken fool -
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % in dreams, no pain will kiss the brow..."
%%% 919-577-9882 %
%%%% <ya...@ieee.org> % 'Eldorado Overture', *Eldorado*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr
Durduran
> Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>
>> On 2007-07-11, Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> wrote:
>>> That is indeed the case I have found too. I don't like it either, but
>>> journals obviously have the right to take whatever proprietary tools
>>> they want, and to force their contributing authors to use them.
>>
>>
>> I am not so sure that it is so obvious all the time. For example, if *I*
>> am forced to purchase MS-Office in order to submit my research, some
>> federal funding is going to pay for that either through the overheads that
>> I would pay to my department or directly from my federal grants. NIH is
>> forcing journals to let authors deposit their papers that came out of
>> federal funding in open databases, in a similar vein, I think NIH and
>> other agencies should force journals (well, they need to start practicing
>> that themselves first) to accept formats that do not require this
>> additional cost of taxpayer's money. The requirement to go with
>> cheaper/free version of somethign with equivalent capabilities should be
>> the norm and not exception.
>
> OK, I had to look up what "NIH" means.
Sorry, I should not have assumed that an accroynm like that is
universally well known. Basically, grant money pays for the
software/hardware as well as the publication costs.
turgut
Gernot Hassenpflug
No worries, I'm happy always to further my education :-)
--
BOFH excuse #80:
That's a great computer you have there; have you considered how it would work as a BSD machine?
Ross Maloney
The tax program insight given is also applicable to Australia. What
further locks things into the Word/Windows outlook in Australia is that
government (at least at the federal and state levels) and universities
make their job descriptions and applications available in Word format
only. However, both of these employers profess to attempting to capture
interest from as wide a population as possible. Interesting!
Ross
Joel J. Adamson
> Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> writes:
> From the amount of activity I've seen in the linux realm (have you
> seen the breadth of variety of new distros that are available
> lately?), I'd say this is not the reason, i.e., there REALLY IS a
> growing market for linux, and MS is starting to worry. And I'm happier
> than a pig after a hot July rain about it.
Really? After getting past my initial excitement about Linux (I still
have post-initial excitement about Linux), I got the feeling that
people have always been saying "This is the year for Linux!" In fact,
I remember people saying it in 1998...
Joel J. Adamson
> jada...@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson) writes:
>
>> Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> writes:
>>
>>
>>> Does Word even have a "comment out" command?
>>
>> It has "hidden text," that for some reason always showed up when I
>> sent documents to other people.
>
> :-) Fantastic! Just the opposite of what commented text is supposed to do.
Yeah...you can either choose to have it hidden, or have it show up --
this goes back to the idea of separate inputs and outputs.
Joel J. Adamson
> jada...@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson) writes:
>
>> As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
>> Unix.
>
> Is Microsoft growling about patent infringements for just a niche
> market? Or was that a joke?
>
> --A very happy FC6 user
Are you referring to Ballmer holding up a Red Hat box to say that
competition exists?
I think Microsoft will go after who ever they can. In some sense they
do have competition in the large-computer world (and its hard for me
to see how they're a contender, nevertheless while I'm working at a
hospital that uses Windows).
Reading the history of Unix, specifically Eric S. Raymond's *Art of
Unix Programming*, it sounds like Unix has always appealed to a
particular sort of mind --- it never particularly dominated any
market, except for clever marketing by AT&T. My proprietary Unix use
is limited, however, so I'll feign ignorance here.
My main point is still that things such as Emacs, LaTeX and Unix-like
systems really appeal to a small crowd, and as such they are not
dependent on "support" from a commercial market. Unix would have died
in the eighties if this were not true. It meeds specific needs, and
appeals to specific sorts of thinking. I do think Linux has potential
in the desktop market, however most people will eventually use it very
differently from how I do (that is, as a substitute for Windows).
Randy Yates
> Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> writes:
>
>> Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> writes:
>> From the amount of activity I've seen in the linux realm (have you
>> seen the breadth of variety of new distros that are available
>> lately?), I'd say this is not the reason, i.e., there REALLY IS a
>> growing market for linux, and MS is starting to worry. And I'm happier
>> than a pig after a hot July rain about it.
>
> Really? After getting past my initial excitement about Linux (I still
> have post-initial excitement about Linux), I got the feeling that
> people have always been saying "This is the year for Linux!" In fact,
> I remember people saying it in 1998...
I didn't say this is THE year, but it appears things are swaying the
linux way. The fact Dell is offering linux boxes out the door says
something, in my opinion.
Besides, in 1998 Microsoft hadn't introduced Vista yet...
--
% Randy Yates % "She tells me that she likes me very much,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % but when I try to touch, she makes it
%%% 919-577-9882 % all too clear."
tsy
> jadam...@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson) writes:
> > Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> writes:
>
> >> Does Word even have a "comment out" command?
>
> > It has "hidden text," that for some reason always showed up when I
> > sent documents to other people.
>
> :-) Fantastic! Just the opposite of what commented text is supposed to do.
It's funny how TeX users tell each other scary stories about Word. If
other people have "Show hidden text" checkbox marked then they
naturally can see hidden text :) Anyway, it must be visually marked as
hidden (by a dotted line).
There is another way to "hide" text in Word, that is, to put it into
comments.
Gernot Hassenpflug
Thanks, I was not trying to make fun of Word, rather it was an honest
question about functionality. Thanks for the extra info.
--
Grrr!! ...Pick a reason...
Durduran
> Really? After getting past my initial excitement about Linux (I still
> have post-initial excitement about Linux), I got the feeling that
> people have always been saying "This is the year for Linux!" In fact,
> I remember people saying it in 1998...
The so-called "Halloween Documents" (from 1998 again) showed that
Microsoft was worried:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
I never understood the point of statements that proclaim some year to be
the year or something. Let's just ignore that.
However, since 1998, the point is that Linux gained acceptance as a
reliable operating system for both production level work from various
companies to Hollywood (specifically for animations), for use as operating
system in cell-hones, millions of routers, printers and other gadgets.
Granted this is not the exact topic we are talking about. However, as
pointed out by someone else, indicators such as Dell ofering linux
desktops for home users, distros such as Ubuntu making its way to schools,
many local governments etc are showing that Linux is successful in what it
is doing.
It is not my interest and I do not have enough knowledge about OS usage
statistics to argue this a lot further. But I think a statement about MS
worrying about competition from opensource and Linux world is not
inaccurate.
Durduran
> TX> From: Tim X <ti...@nospam.dev.null>
> TX> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:14:29 +1000
>
>
> TX> I'm now seriously thinking about creating a web app that staff can
> TX> use to fill in the boxes and click a button to have nicely
> TX> formatted, organisation template compliant, pdf documents
> TX> returned, plus get the benefit of consistent archiving of project
> TX> documents and allow re-use of textual elements to reduce the time
> TX> spent documenting the project.
>
> We did a project like this in 2000. It is described here:
>
> @Article{ReportGeneration07,
> author = {Boris Veytsman and Maria Shmilevich},
> title = {Automatic Report Generation with {W}eb, {\TeX} and {SQL}},
> journal = {TUGboat},
> year = 2007,
> volume = 28,
> number = 1,
> pages = {77--79},
> note = {\url{https://www.tug.org/members/TUGboat/tb28-1/tb88veytsman-report.pdf}}
> }
Is the paper and/or the paper available for non-members like us?
turgut
Joel J. Adamson
> On 2007-07-12, Joel J. Adamson <jada...@partners.org> wrote:
>> Really? After getting past my initial excitement about Linux (I still
>> have post-initial excitement about Linux), I got the feeling that
>> people have always been saying "This is the year for Linux!" In fact,
>> I remember people saying it in 1998...
>
>
> The so-called "Halloween Documents" (from 1998 again) showed that
> Microsoft was worried:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
I dig: I've read those papers. They're kinda funny sometimes.
> [snip]
> It is not my interest and I do not have enough knowledge about OS usage
> statistics to argue this a lot further. But I think a statement about MS
> worrying about competition from opensource and Linux world is not
> inaccurate.
All that Linux has to do to stay on my desktop is offer me a Unix-like
OS. I will enjoy continuing to use it even if it's only as popular as
it is now.
Now the funny thing about Microsoft is that, other than losing people
like me, who never liked their products, is that they exist within a
proprietary software world where things are still bought and sold. I
read, for instance, a blog by a "windows fan" who said "don't take
these reports about Amazon switching to Linux so seriously," on
account of the fact that they weren't switching from Windows, but from
proprietary Unix. Now, so those are a few servers that Windows won't
ever get.
My point being that it's strange for Microsoft to try to compete for
customers with Linux --- people who like Linux or need it for its
performance advantages. I really have a hard time taking Microsoft
products seriously --- most proprietary software products I've had
contact with (even "serious" ones aimed at scientists) are either of
terrible quality (EndNote) or strange and un-standardized (Stata;
i.e., there's no "grep" in Stata, but there are some terribly limited
regular expression functions; clearly designed for people who wil
lonly use Stata and not any other programming environment). I like
the idea of scientists being in control, and not having to wait for a
corporation to get its friggin' act together (something corporations
have no interest in because they can sell terrible products without
knowing).
Boris Veytsman
D> Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:55:53 +0000 (UTC)
D> Is the paper and/or the paper available for non-members like us?
I've sent it you
--
Good luck
-Boris
The early bird gets the coffee left over from the night before.
anon k
> anon k <nos...@nul.nul> writes:
>
>> Randy Yates wrote:
>>> anon k <nos...@nul.nul> writes:
>>>> [...]
>>>> There is the serious downside of not being able to e-mail a Word file
>>>> to a collaborator. We instead mark up paper printouts. That's part
>>>> of the price that one pays for using LaTeX.
>>> No, not really. That's what version control systems, especially those
>>> that operate over the web such as subversion, are for. My
>>> collaborators can use subversion to checkin/update my LaTeX
>>> document (if they wanted to) from across the continent. THey can also
>>> view (via an HTTPD svn module) the latest checked in documents right
>>> on the web,
>> How do you work around their refusal to use LaTeX?
>
> Umm, oops. Got the context wrong - sorry!
You had my hopes up!
Robert Heller
An interesting article about the *economic* aspect of Microsoft vs.
Open Source (which somewhat explains the why of Microsoft's agressive
competition):
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4834.html
>
> Joel
Michael Prager
> I didn't say this is THE year, but it appears things are swaying the
> linux way. The fact Dell is offering linux boxes out the door says
> something, in my opinion.
One lesson from the OS/2 debacle is that the public does not
like to install aftermarket operating systems. IMO, for one or
more big vendors to sell Linux preloaded is a necessary
condition for Linux to succeed on a wider scale.
--
Mike Prager, NOAA, Beaufort, NC
Address spam-trapped; remove color to reply.
* Opinions expressed are personal and not represented otherwise.
* Any use of tradenames does not constitute a NOAA endorsement.
David Kastrup
> Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>
>> I will break netiquette and post without a quote. I do not think LaTeX/TeX
>> is dying. Watching this group tells me otherwise. Every other day there
>> are new packages posted to CTAN, amazing things like perltex come out.
>> Everytime adobe releases new features for pdf files, they are picked up as
>> a LaTeX package etc. It seems to me that within the relatively small
>> community, LaTeX is still flourishing.
>
> As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
> Unix.
Or the Iliad. And then somebody surprisingly pops out a blockbuster
and you find that with all the graphic detail, he expunged the
editor wars, uh deitor, _deity_ wars. Now where is the fun in that?
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
UKTUG FAQ: <URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html>
David Kastrup
> Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> wrote:
>
>> I didn't say this is THE year, but it appears things are swaying the
>> linux way. The fact Dell is offering linux boxes out the door says
>> something, in my opinion.
>
> One lesson from the OS/2 debacle is that the public does not
> like to install aftermarket operating systems. IMO, for one or
> more big vendors to sell Linux preloaded is a necessary
> condition for Linux to succeed on a wider scale.
It is overrated. *roff are ubiquitous on Unix-like systems, and still
nobody uses them anymore except in very limited circumstances
involving the manmac macros.
Ross Maloney
Maybe this is close to the topic question. What the TeX suite does is
divides the input from the output - there is not instant gratification
of output from one or two lines of input.
It is the statistics reference that bought me to that realisation. When
I learnt statistics I used both SPSS and SAS on batch and time sharing
machines. I needed to process some statistics in my research so I put
the SPSS package that the university provided on my PC. Terror then set
in. It provided an environment in which the data was input and stats
calculated and displayed. All the documentation assumed showed this as
the model to used. Talk about an awkward way of doing things. Then I
found R. It encouraged data to be prepared externally from it as a text
file (maybe the old ASCII - American Standard Code for Information
Interchange - is more unique a description of that file).
Think about it. Word and EndNote are environments, just as was that
SPSS package. Both encourage the embodyment of that environment and not
to think beyond it. Contrast that to LaTeX, BibTeX, and Beemer. What
they say is just give me your ASCII file and then let me do my thing
after you have done your thing. The preparation of that ASCII file does
not give results as you are preparing it. It is a completely different
way of thinking and behaving. From the users viewpoint, however,
another level of activity and learning is required. I would argue that
the techniques learnt and used for preparation of such an ACSII file can
be reused elsewhere. This contrast to, what is done in 'an environment'
remains in that environment. Microsoft encourage the use of an environment.
Ross
Tim X
> TX> From: Tim X <ti...@nospam.dev.null>
> TX> Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:14:29 +1000
>
>
> TX> I'm now seriously thinking about creating a web app that staff can
> TX> use to fill in the boxes and click a button to have nicely
> TX> formatted, organisation template compliant, pdf documents
> TX> returned, plus get the benefit of consistent archiving of project
> TX> documents and allow re-use of textual elements to reduce the time
> TX> spent documenting the project.
>
> We did a project like this in 2000. It is described here:
>
> @Article{ReportGeneration07,
> author = {Boris Veytsman and Maria Shmilevich},
> title = {Automatic Report Generation with {W}eb, {\TeX} and {SQL}},
> journal = {TUGboat},
> year = 2007,
> volume = 28,
> number = 1,
> pages = {77--79},
> note = {\url{https://www.tug.org/members/TUGboat/tb28-1/tb88veytsman-report.pdf}}
> }
>
>
>
> --
Thanks Boris. I was going to go through some of the TUGBoat back issues for
research and you have saved me a bit of time.
Tim
--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
Tim X
> Randy Yates <ya...@ieee.org> writes:
>
>> Robert Heller <hel...@deepsoft.com> writes:
>> From the amount of activity I've seen in the linux realm (have you
>> seen the breadth of variety of new distros that are available
>> lately?), I'd say this is not the reason, i.e., there REALLY IS a
>> growing market for linux, and MS is starting to worry. And I'm happier
>> than a pig after a hot July rain about it.
>
> Really? After getting past my initial excitement about Linux (I still
> have post-initial excitement about Linux), I got the feeling that
> people have always been saying "This is the year for Linux!" In fact,
> I remember people saying it in 1998...
>
> Joel
>
> --
I'm not sure GNU Linux will ever be a big competitor with Windows on the
desktop (though distros like Ubuntu and maybe even Linspire are improving
popularity in tis area). However, GNU Linux has very much impacted on the
server front, both for MS and the big Unix manufacturers. The data centre I use
to manage had big name Unix and a few Windows servers in 2000. By next month,
all the Unix boxes will be gone and the number of Windows servers is
diminishing fast (currently, only used for software where there isn't a good
GNU Linux competitor).
This move is partially about Linux being a good solid and reliable OS, but is
very much related to the ability to leverage off commodity hardware rather than
extremely expensive big named servers. This makes scaling up or down much
cheaper, increases levels of redundency and reduces vendor lockin. The growth
in 'virtual servers' via things like VMWare, Zen etc is also having a big
impact. While you can take advantage of commodity hardware with MS, it is
considerably harder to administer MS servers than Unix/Linux ones (partially to
do with the GUI orientation of Windows) and it is much easier to ensure
different applications have less impact on each other under Unix/Linux than
Windows (though MS has improved in this regard quite a lot since the NT days).
MS's business plan has been very much oriented towards the desktop environment.
Linux hasn't really concerned them that much in this arena. I think a far
bigger concern for them is the sort of stuff Google is doing. If the trend was
to really move towards low end desktops with all your apps located centrally on
some server, then MS could be in trouble. However, I think we have a long way
to go before this occurs - for one thing, I don't think network access is quite
ubiquitous enough yet and I'm not convinced Web 2.0 won't turn into Bubble 2.0
(in the sense that the dot com boom was Bubble 1.0). Web based interfaces still
have a way to go before people will find it as comfortable as desktop GUIs. I
won't even go into all the issues associated with having your data
stored/controlled by some 3rd party.
To get back on topic, at least all my document data can be accessed regardless
of my OS or whether I'm accessing it via the web or via hard drive, looking at
it in notepad, vi, emacs or just cat. The downside is that I can still access
some of my early publications, which quite honestly, I wish had been done in
some weird proprietary format that was no longer accessible!
Tim X
> On 2007-07-11, Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> wrote:
>> That is indeed the case I have found too. I don't like it either, but
>> journals obviously have the right to take whatever proprietary tools
>> they want, and to force their contributing authors to use them.
>
>
> I am not so sure that it is so obvious all the time. For example, if *I*
> am forced to purchase MS-Office in order to submit my research, some
> federal funding is going to pay for that either through the overheads that
> I would pay to my department or directly from my federal grants. NIH is
> forcing journals to let authors deposit their papers that came out of
> federal funding in open databases, in a similar vein, I think NIH and
> other agencies should force journals (well, they need to start practicing
> that themselves first) to accept formats that do not require this
> additional cost of taxpayer's money. The requirement to go with
> cheaper/free version of somethign with equivalent capabilities should be
> the norm and not exception.
>
I sometimes wonder about the future of journals. When you look at technology
like 'web pipes', RSS/Atom/RDF and see the growth of 'aggregation' sites, you
have to wonder how long it will be before traditional journals morph into
something more like an aggregation and review service that you just access via
the web. done well, I think there could be a business case for this type of
service. Instead of paying for a journal, you subscribe to the service and once
a month (or whatever) that service produces a 'virtual' journal consisting of
links to web based articles that have been peer reviewed.
For the right price, I'd subscribe to this type of service because it would
save me a lot of searching and there would be some increased guarantee of
quality/correctness because of the peer review.
The question would then become one of deciding if TeX and friends was
appropriate for publication in this medium. While I think its probably as good
or better than many other solutions, TeX isn't really oriented to electronic
publishing in this sense - one of the strengths of TeX is the quality of the
printed documents - to what extent it can fit into 'typesetting' electronic
documents is something I'm not that sure about (I'm not talking about putting
PDFs 'on the web" as I don't consider these as real electronic documents - they
are more like electronic representations of printed documents.
Still, I prefer to write in LaTeX and convert to HTML rather than write in HTML
or even XML, but given that they are all just markup languages when used in
this way, my preference is more to do with familiarity rather than selecting
the best tool for the job.
Joel J. Adamson
> jada...@partners.org (Joel J. Adamson) writes:
>> As I said before, LaTeX will always have a niche market, just like
>> Unix.
>
> Or the Iliad. And then somebody surprisingly pops out a blockbuster
> and you find that with all the graphic detail, he expunged the
> editor wars, uh deitor, _deity_ wars. Now where is the fun in that?
Good point. I'm sitting here trying to think of another analogy...
Well, I like the Ferrari analogy. Except that's too closely tied to
income...hmmm, well...yeah, let me know if you come up with anything.
Joel J. Adamson
> Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>
>> On 2007-07-11, Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> wrote:
>>> That is indeed the case I have found too. I don't like it either, but
>>> journals obviously have the right to take whatever proprietary tools
>>> they want, and to force their contributing authors to use them.
> I sometimes wonder about the future of journals. When you look at technology
> like 'web pipes', RSS/Atom/RDF and see the growth of 'aggregation' sites, you
> have to wonder how long it will be before traditional journals morph into
> something more like an aggregation and review service that you just access via
> the web. done well, I think there could be a business case for this type of
> service. Instead of paying for a journal, you subscribe to the service and once
> a month (or whatever) that service produces a 'virtual' journal consisting of
> links to web based articles that have been peer reviewed.
I have several web (online-only) subscriptions to journals already.
The nice thing is that they always produce a downloadable pdf that I
can print out and take on the bus with me. I still like reading
paper.
I know of some online-only journals, but they are held to be lower quality.
As long as peer-review is still in place, I'll still read it; but I
always like having a paper copy --- for that nothing beats TeX.
Gernot Hassenpflug
> Tim X <ti...@nospam.dev.null> writes:
>
>> Durduran <durduran...@REMOVEMEweb-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>>
>>> On 2007-07-11, Gernot Hassenpflug <ger...@nict.go.jp> wrote:
>>>> That is indeed the case I have found too. I don't like it either, but
>>>> journals obviously have the right to take whatever proprietary tools
>>>> they want, and to force their contributing authors to use them.
>> I sometimes wonder about the future of journals. When you look at technology
>> like 'web pipes', RSS/Atom/RDF and see the growth of 'aggregation' sites, you
>> have to wonder how long it will be before traditional journals morph into
>> something more like an aggregation and review service that you just access via
>> the web. done well, I think there could be a business case for this type of
>> service. Instead of paying for a journal, you subscribe to the service and once
>> a month (or whatever) that service produces a 'virtual' journal consisting of
>> links to web based articles that have been peer reviewed.
>
> I have several web (online-only) subscriptions to journals already.
> The nice thing is that they always produce a downloadable pdf that I
> can print out and take on the bus with me. I still like reading
> paper.
>
> I know of some online-only journals, but they are held to be lower quality.
>
> As long as peer-review is still in place, I'll still read it; but I
> always like having a paper copy --- for that nothing beats TeX.
Annales Geophysicae, part of the EGU Journals [Copernicus Publishers],
do have open access for all articles, with excellent (recently
updated) LaTeX package for authors. The AGU and other US-based
journals in my field are way behind in that regard. I expect maths and
CS journals to be more in line with what I see happening in the
European journals. The future looks bright there.