From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:02:22 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 05:46:35 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Rainer Schoepf Reply-To: Rainer Schoepf Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 24 Jul 1997 12:20:02 +0200 Message-ID: <76d8o892gc.fsf@perdita.zdv.Uni-Mainz.de> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO j.doumont@ieee.org (JL Doumont) writes: > Specifically, I am looking for any or all of the following: > - clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; - Platform independence - Stability and interchangibility of documents (as opposed to Word 6 vs. Office 95 vs. Office 97) -- Rainer Schöpf =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:02:22 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 07:29:17 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: nde@scs.leeds.ac.uk (N D Efford (CoMIR)) Reply-To: nde@scs.leeds.ac.uk (N D Efford (CoMIR)) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Message-ID: <1997Jul24.114019.11284@leeds.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 12:40:19 +0100 (BST) To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO JL Doumont (j.doumont@ieee.org) wrote: : - clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; Portability. TeX/LaTeX constitute just about the most portable document preparation system there is. I can work on a paper using my Silicon Graphics Unix workstation here in the office, then finish it off at home on my DOS-based PC, and _everything_ works. Flexibility. You can get TeX/LaTeX to do almost anything you want. You just have to look at the incredible variety of packages on CTAN to appreciate this. I doubt that any competitor can provide similar levels of flexibility. Precise control. Some competitive systems may have similar degrees of precision, but WYSIWYG is actually _less_ convenient than the markup language approach when, for example, there is a need to position things precisely on a page, time and time again. Quality of output - particularly with regard to mathematics. Suitability for large projects. Given the tendency for MS Windows and Windows-based wordprocessors to crash on my PC, I'd be nervous about tackling a big project with such tools. I find LaTeX to be more stable and to provide a richer environment for managing book writing and the like. Nice aspects include * clear, explicit separation of content from what defines document style * ability to split books, etc, into smaller more manageable pieces that are easily combined once writing is complete * ease with which a table of contents, bibliography and index can be generated Nick =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sun Jul 27 08:03:25 1997 Archive-Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 06:04:01 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Thierry Bouche Reply-To: Thierry Bouche Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 24 Jul 1997 14:16:26 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.106) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO j.doumont@ieee.org (JL Doumont) writes: > - clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; don't know if it's important to you, but some of the typographic features of tex are exclusive. Virtual fonts combined with smart ligatures can achieve a level of quality found nowhere else. (or that require a font editor, and thousands of true fonts, that will be downloaded separately, and a lot of hand work, replacements, &c.) also the hyphenation&justification algorythms of tex are not comparable to those of word or even Xpress because they act globally on a §, not line per line. a lot of these could however be superseded by the HZ programm if it comes ever out? > - estimation of the number of people using TeX worldwide. i read somewhere 20,000 but i don't know where this number came from. the big problem with TeX in the industry is that the printer typically cannot fix your files, if they encounter a problem, like they would do with any standard format, you're bound to postscript, and all its surprizes (or interpreter's idiosyncrasies)... -- Thierry Bouche. ----- thierry.bouche@ujf-grenoble.fr http://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~bouche/ =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:02:22 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 07:52:13 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: David Kastrup Reply-To: David Kastrup Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 24 Jul 1997 14:41:37 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.93) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: j.doumont@ieee.org To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Rainer Schoepf writes: > j.doumont@ieee.org (JL Doumont) writes: > > > Specifically, I am looking for any or all of the following: > > - clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; > > - Platform independence Meaning DOS/Windows/OS/2/Linux/other Unices/VMS/TOPS 20/Amiga-OS/TOS/Apple... Pretty every weird operating system has some TeX available for it cheap or for free. And new operating systems to come will probably be no exception. > - Stability and interchangibility of documents (as opposed to Word 6 > vs. Office 95 vs. Office 97) Plain text-based file formats. This allows for good compression, and manipulation and generation of TeX/LaTeX files with standard text utilities and tools. Also, if you happen to crash your disk real badly, you stand much better chances of stringing the disk blocks of an important TeX text together than of one of Word. A very important advantage is that you manipulate the look and the contents of the text separately when using LaTeX (unless you're doing things wrong). That way operations like changing the sizes, or the number of columns, or all captions of figures, or the used font systems, or similar things are very easy operations and do not involve working the text over. This pays off praticularly handsomely if you're editing large documents (>100 pages). Typing in math formulae is pretty fast, too, and the results look quite nice. Of course, this is one area in which WYSIWYG has some advantages in the editing area: when you glance over things, the LaTeX notation is harder to comprehend in the source. Another advantage is that TeX is a batch system running as a separate application, and so are the viewers and various utilities. This means that the source text and data structures of the editor cannot be crashed (assuming a sane operating system) by spell checkers, typesetter, previewer, printer system, a complicated WYSIWYG redisplay and reformatting engine munging through large data structure for each keypress and so on. In contrast, the enormous "integrated applications" available for Word Processing can ruin your source text by single bugs in *any* of the above mentioned components. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:02:25 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 12:18:05 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Federico Waisman Reply-To: Federico Waisman Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:53:06 -0400 Message-ID: <33D77A62.1A5B@cornell.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: "N D Efford (CoMIR)" To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Recently I had a discussion with a MS Word user and all the issues that you brought can be done in Word. The only advantages that I see are (1) multiplatform, (2) better equations and (3) zero $$$. > * clear, explicit separation of content from what > defines document style > > * ability to split books, etc, into smaller more > manageable pieces that are easily combined > once writing is complete > > * ease with which a table of contents, bibliography > and index can be generated All this can be done in MS Word, like bibliography with "end note", table of contents, multi-documents, formatting, etc, etc. With the advantage of WYSIWYG. I am a user of LaTex/Tex and I will be using it, but let's be fair and critize in an objective way. Federico -- Federico Waisman School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Cornell University email: fmw1@cornell.edu Ithaca, NY 14853 http://www.cee.cornell.edu/~federico =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:02:25 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:07:35 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: maarten@cpt6.stm.tudelft.nl (Maarten D. de Jong) Reply-To: maarten@cpt6.stm.tudelft.nl (Maarten D. de Jong) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 24 Jul 1997 16:03:24 GMT Message-ID: <5r7ucc$5rg$1@news.tudelft.nl> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO JL Doumont (j.doumont@ieee.org) wrote: : Greetings. : : After programming TeX for almost 10 years, I now use it for virtually all : the documents I produce, from business letters to four-color corporate : documents, including, more recently, graphs (with log scales and all). : Despite the commercial success achieved with these documents, nontechnical : customers still ask me why I do not use Microsoft Office or Quark Xpress, : instead of that "watchacallit-TeX that nobody else uses." When I tell them : what's so great about TeX, they say you can do all that with MS Word style : sheets. Well, it's true in some respect. The problem with (La)TeX is its steep learning curve for things which are not described in Lamports book. The type of `it looks like this, but instead of A I want B'. I have speant many long hours trying in vain to do B. A true TeXnician may laugh at my flaunderings, but these ever-so-small problems are enough to have any unprepared typist run screaming for Word. The Companion is good, but it is so _packed_ with information, it really is hard to find what you want. The Graphics Com- panion is much better in this respect. More explainatory text, and less cramped with information. Back to those programs: XPress may not be TeX, it sure has lots of TeX-like features! And if your platform lacks a decent previewer and you do not have access to a PostScript printer, the road from editor, TeX, dvips, ghostscript to printed document may prove to be too long. (dvips because it can handle graphics quite well.) : I suppose some of you encounter similar skeptics, so my question is, do : you have any undisputable arguments or authoritative facts to quote in : those cases? : : Specifically, I am looking for any or all of the following: : - clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; It is available on nearly every platform, and the format of the files TeX produces are not subject to changes as is the case in the MS world. But some- how, people are not sensitive to this, since conversion programs to the job quickly and, if your file formats do not differ too much, without problems. : - awards won by TeX/Don Knuth or authoritative praise about TeX; I don't think this is a good point. MS-products (or PC programs in general) receive praise by the truckload. Only people who already know TeX's merits (publishers, scientists) appreciate this praise. Same goes for the person who designed TeX -- Knuth is a respectable person and has won several awards. But so have Gates and Grove. : - estimation of the number of people using TeX worldwide. Not of importance when compared to the amount of people using other products. I doubt that the `casual' users of regular wordprocessors will make the change. >From the above you can conclude that I don't like TeX very much. To be honest, I cannot say how I feel. I like its dvi-principle, and the quality of the maths output, and the fact that it's free and readily extensible with all kinds of packages to draw molecules and music and what-not-else. I do not like its complexity and (face it) sparse and difficult documentation. It's easy when you know how applies in full to TeX. Also, trivial looking things in a WYSIWYG program can take many hours of fiddling in TeX. For example: in a report, I want to number all pages consequetively, except for the pages containing only pictures in the appendices. The title pages of those appendices I _do_ want to number, and _those_ pagenumbers (which of course are still increasing because of the pages in the appendix) I want to see in the table of contents. How do I do this without manually placing pagenumbers there? My roommate is a devout Word user, and he can read and write with that program. He is now in the process of writing all his articles and official publications using LaTeX, _because of the way math looks in a document typeset by TeX_. It simply looks better. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:02:25 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 12:32:01 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Taco Hoekwater Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 19:00:56 +0200 Message-ID: <33D78A48.62DF4969@worldonline.nl> Reply-To: bittext@worldonline.nl MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Rainer Schoepf wrote: > > j.doumont@ieee.org (JL Doumont) writes: > > > Specifically, I am looking for any or all of the following: > > - clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; * unlimited number of different paragraph "styles" * unlimited number of keystroke macros * typesetter quality output as opposed to laserprinter * better hyphenation * better kerning * much better math * floats that actually float * output device independence * modular document handling (e.g. chunked business correspondence) * hyperlinked PDF and HTML output * batch-generated documents are possible * ... > - Platform independence > - Stability and interchangibility of documents (as opposed to Word 6 > vs. Office 95 vs. Office 97) ? I doubt this one. Try compiling an AmsTeX document under 2e. Greetings, Taco =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:02:34 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:11:41 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: David Kastrup Reply-To: David Kastrup Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 24 Jul 1997 21:58:00 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.93) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Federico Waisman writes: > Recently I had a discussion with a MS Word user and all the issues > that you brought can be done in Word. The only advantages that I see are > (1) multiplatform, (2) better equations and (3) zero $$$. > > > * clear, explicit separation of content from what > > defines document style > > > > * ability to split books, etc, into smaller more > > manageable pieces that are easily combined > > once writing is complete > > > > * ease with which a table of contents, bibliography > > and index can be generated > > All this can be done in MS Word, like bibliography with "end note", > table of contents, multi-documents, formatting, etc, etc. With the > advantage of WYSIWYG. Quite right. The only problem is nobody does it. When you receive a 500-hundred page document in Word written by some nit-wit changing font sizes and styles by hand in (almost) every footnote, and doing the most layout by hand, and you have to adapt the style to that of some publisher, you could just puke. And don't think this sort of crap does not happen over and over. With LaTeX, at least, you can hardly do things wrong like that. And if a few footnotes happen to have their size not by style, but by hand-tuning, they will stick out butt-ugly in the LaTeX source, very obvious. With Word you'll not notice any difference until you change the style. With WYSIWYG it gets easier to forget how the look came about, and this can backfire sometimes. The problem is that neither LaTeX nor MS Word are tools for idiots, but MS Word can make this easier to forget. And add to that the advantage that using a batch system like LaTeX your source code is only in danger of being mangled beyond recognition by your editor, not your equation typesetter, not your WYSIWYG redisplay engine, not your bibliography software, not your spell checker and so on. They all run in different processes and cannot bomb the editor memory. For extremely complex systems like word processing this is a reassuring advantage. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:01:45 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 21:56:59 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Paul Seelig Reply-To: Paul Seelig Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 25 Jul 1997 04:29:40 +0200 Message-ID: <877mefkgob.fsf@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO j.doumont@ieee.org (JL Doumont) writes: > Despite the commercial success achieved with these documents, nontechnical > customers still ask me why I do not use Microsoft Office or Quark Xpress, > instead of that "watchacallit-TeX that nobody else uses." When I tell them > what's so great about TeX, they say you can do all that with MS Word style > sheets. > I'm no TeX wizards but only a simple user of LaTeX. But the things one can not do without excessive additional costs and which surpass every usual word processor are for my personal usage things like typesetting documents in various african and other non european languages. I use it for documents written in Lingala applying the superb TIPA fonts by Fukui Rei. Then there is for colleagues of mine the ArabTeX package and the ethiop package for writing documents in Amharic. Parallel writing of printed and HTML documentation is possible by using LaTeX only and applying LaTeX2HTML on the same file for getting very good results. BTW, LaTeX2HTML Version 97.1 has been released a little more than a week ago. > I suppose some of you encounter similar skeptics, so my question is, do > you have any undisputable arguments or authoritative facts to quote in > those cases? > Never try to convince someone with undisputable arguments or authoritative facts which in the end prove to be completely irrelevant for the practical needs of those you want to convince. Cheers, P. *8^) -- Paul Seelig pseelig@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de African Music Archive - Institute for Ethnology and Africa Studies Johannes Gutenberg-University - Forum 6 - 55099 Mainz/Germany My Homepage in the WWW at the URL http://www.uni-mainz.de/~pseelig =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Jul 25 08:01:45 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 23:11:19 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: jeffmac@connext.net (Jeffrey McArthur) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 03:58:39 GMT X-MX-Warning: Warning -- Invalid "Reply-To" header. Reply-To: jeffmac Message-ID: <33d81f7f.2154908@news.connext.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO On Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:53:55 +0200, j.doumont@ieee.org (JL Doumont) wrote: >Greetings. > >After programming TeX for almost 10 years, I now use it for virtually all >the documents I produce, from business letters to four-color corporate >documents, including, more recently, graphs (with log scales and all). >Despite the commercial success achieved with these documents, nontechnical >customers still ask me why I do not use Microsoft Office or Quark Xpress, >instead of that "watchacallit-TeX that nobody else uses." When I tell them >what's so great about TeX, they say you can do all that with MS Word style >sheets. > >I suppose some of you encounter similar skeptics, so my question is, do >you have any undisputable arguments or authoritative facts to quote in >those cases? Over the past five years I have developed a memo style for plain TeX that does what I want. The memo style prints the company logo and such at the top of the page and automatically prints the date and such. Nothing terribly complex. Anyway about two years ago this memo style was "smuggled" onto the network by a fellow employee. Since then, the production staff have used it daily to write memos to our clients. There are two reasons the macro caught on. First, it printed out the company letterhead without any effort at all. Second, and probably most important, the person who "smuggled" out my macros created a template for a memo with lots of comments. It explained in detail how to type up the memo and what macros were available. Word and most other word processors do not allow you to add comments to your source. They are more interrested in how it looks. When you typeset and print the memo, the comments are not visible. This allows you to add personal notes and such to the memos. This can be very important if you ever need to go back through your memos. From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sun Jul 27 08:03:25 1997 Archive-Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 06:30:20 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: maarten@cpt6.stm.tudelft.nl (Maarten D. de Jong) Reply-To: maarten@cpt6.stm.tudelft.nl (Maarten D. de Jong) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 25 Jul 1997 16:37:26 GMT Message-ID: <5rako6$1ep$1@news.tudelft.nl> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO David Kastrup (dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de) wrote: : The problem is that neither LaTeX nor MS Word are tools for idiots, : but MS Word can make this easier to forget. I think this statement says everything -- gotta make a not of this one if someone starts attacking LaTeX again :-). Maarten =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sun Jul 27 08:03:25 1997 Archive-Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 07:40:44 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: mcohen@cpcug.org (Michael Cohen) Reply-To: mcohen@cpcug.org (Michael Cohen) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 25 Jul 1997 17:42:38 GMT Message-ID: <5raoie$25d$1@news2.digex.net> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO JL Doumont (j.doumont@ieee.org) wrote: : Greetings. :[snip] : Despite the commercial success achieved with these documents, nontechnical : customers still ask me why I do not use Microsoft Office or Quark Xpress, : instead of that "watchacallit-TeX that nobody else uses." When I tell them : what's so great about TeX, they say you can do all that with MS Word style : sheets. : : I suppose some of you encounter similar skeptics, so my question is, do : you have any undisputable arguments or authoritative facts to quote in : those cases? I have a friend and co-researcher in another city who introduced me to LaTeX. She and I write joint papers sending the LaTeX documents back and forth by regular e-mail. Some of these documents are fairly long, but we have not had any problems. Another remote co-author of mine uses MS Word. What a pain! Although we know how to attach documents in e-mail, they frequently come out scrambled. If so, there is nothing one can do but re-send. Even moderately long documents also cause problems on some systems (e.g. AOL). Having tried both, I vote for LaTeX. -- Michael P. Cohen home phone 202-232-4651 1615 Q Street NW #T-1 office phone 202-219-1917 Washington, DC 20009-6310 office fax 202-219-2061 mcohen@cpcug.org =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sun Jul 27 08:03:25 1997 Archive-Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 09:33:35 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: ddg@cci.com (D. Dale Gulledge) Reply-To: ddg@cci.com (D. Dale Gulledge) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Message-ID: Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 20:44:03 GMT To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In article <33D78A48.62DF4969@worldonline.nl> Taco Hoekwater writes: Rainer Schoepf wrote: > > j.doumont@ieee.org (JL Doumont) writes: > > > Specifically, I am looking for any or all of the following: > > - clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; * unlimited number of different paragraph "styles" * unlimited number of keystroke macros * typesetter quality output as opposed to laserprinter * better hyphenation * better kerning * much better math * floats that actually float * output device independence * modular document handling (e.g. chunked business correspondence) * hyperlinked PDF and HTML output * batch-generated documents are possible * ... - If you are using a language that hasn't gotten any support from Word, et al, you can provide your own hyphenation patterns and ispell can be taught to spell check just about any language. - You can use any text editor that provides an interface you like, and text editors are less prone to pausing for long periods while they repaint the screen. When you are typing large amounts of textual content, that saves time. - You can train TeX to handle any input coding in a few minutes. I hacked ISO 8859-3 support in no more time than it would have taken to connect to the net and search for it. - For large documents, your source is only slightly larger than the actual text. -- D. Dale Gulledge, Software Engineer Directory & Operator Services, Nortel. Rochester, NY I decline permission to use my name or e-mail address on any mailing list based on this or any other article posted to the net. I do not accept unsolicited junk e-mail, and I am the sole judge of what qualifies as junk e-mail. I do accept direct, individual replies to my articles concerning their content. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sun Jul 27 08:03:25 1997 Archive-Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 11:45:33 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: David Kastrup Reply-To: David Kastrup Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 26 Jul 1997 18:32:49 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.93) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO nde@scs.leeds.ac.uk (N D Efford (CoMIR)) writes: > Suitability for large projects. Given the tendency for MS Windows > and Windows-based wordprocessors to crash on my PC, I'd be > nervous about tackling a big project with such tools. I find > LaTeX to be more stable and to provide a richer environment for > managing book writing and the like. Don't forget that even if LaTeX and tools around it were prone to crashing like hell (well, nobody has been able to cause TeX tampering with memory not belonging to it for at least a decade, but just let's think about it) they have miniscule chances of destroying your text if you are using an operating system (something using memory protection mechanisms). With an integrated environment like that used for most commercial systems, every functionality can bomb the text. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sun Jul 27 08:03:25 1997 Archive-Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 12:02:35 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: ptjm@ican.net (Patrick TJ McPhee) Reply-To: ptjm@ican.net (Patrick TJ McPhee) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 26 Jul 1997 16:49:44 GMT Message-ID: <5rd9r8$nit$1@readme.ican.net> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In article <33d81f7f.2154908@news.connext.net>, Jeffrey McArthur wrote: % Word and most other word processors do not allow you to add comments to your % source. To be fair, this is not correct. Most if not all major word processors allow comments and annotations. -- Patrick TJ McPhee East York Canada ptjm@ican.net =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:02:38 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 02:51:57 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: dqua@san.rr.com (Derick J.R. Qua) Reply-To: dqua@san.rr.com (Derick J.R. Qua) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 00:49:49 -0700 Message-ID: To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO TeX and relatives not only produce the highest quality documents for relatively less cost than word, but the output is also consistent and platform independent. It isn't easy to learn, but it is easy to use and powerful. I often liken it to calculus, tensor analysis and differential geometry; many people have problems learning it, but when they do get it, they can use it to solve problems that would other wise be difficult, if not intractable using other means. Plus, two words: "STRUCTURED DOCUMENT" While Word will allow one to visually twiddle a document's fonts, line spacing, letter spacing, put a graphic there, click on the smiley dog or buggy-eyed paperclip to change headings, etc., TeX allows one to focus on the content, structure and style of a document. This is extremely useful to tech-doc. The closest WYSIWIG tools [that still produce inferior equation quality to TeX] are FrameMaker and Interleaf (but these are multithousand dollar programs under Unix, and shy of a thousand for Windows). I can also edit TeX documents from anywhere, even across a serial link or telnet session. While not perfect, TeX documents are easier to diff than Word documents, hance they are more easily stored into a CM system like ClearCASE or CVS. I live in both worlds, I must confess. I use TeX for heavy-duty material, such as articles, reports and techdoc (I did my thesis and dissertation, both in the 100 and 600 page range, respectively in TeX using Emacs). For general correspondence, quick memos, presentations and suchlike, I use...well, I use Emacs/vi and HTML ;-) [I sometimes use Word for quick note taking and letters... pretty much anything short, short-lived and non technical documents in ENGLISH] I don't use TeX for everything... The right tool, for the right job, at the right level of useability. When I have billiard balls or a simple pendulum, Newton's laws are entirely appropriate; for dealing with electrons or a double jointed pendulum at the edge of a rotating disc, well, other methods are more appropriate... -- Derick J.R. Qua Netscape Communications Corp Software Engineer San Diego Operations ---------------------------------------------------------------------- It was, of course, a grand and impressive thing to do, to mistrust the obvious, and to pin one's faith in things which could not be seen! --Galen, On the Natural Faculties, I.13 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:02:38 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 06:10:40 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: matt@it.osha.sut.ac.jp Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 28 Jul 1997 10:30:23 GMT Message-ID: <5rhsbv$1dek@oshans.cc.osha.sut.ac.jp> Reply-To: matt@it.osha.sut.ac.jp To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In <33D922D9.5F9E@grc.varian.com>, Mirko Vukovic writes: >yes, yes, yes to all the advantages. > >But Word is still the standard in the world. A sturdy converter between >the two is essential for tex/latex survival. Not to disagree, but how about a little perspective here? When I was in college not so long ago, WordPerfect was THE wordprocessor. For OS's, it was either Macintosh or DOS; OS/2 was the next big thing, Windows was just a gleam in Bill Gates' eye, and Microsoft Word? Just another Macintosh program. So, how long has Word been "the standard?" Four or five years at most. How long will it continue to be the standard? Noone knows--but it won't be forever. The point of this is that one of TeX's merits is that you don't have that constant pressure to UPGRADE NOW OR ELSE!! that plagues the commercial software world, and I think there will always be people who appreciate that continuity and stability. Again, I don't mean to disagree with Mirko's argument--compatibility and convert- ibility are certainly desirable. But if you get too concerned about keeping up with the Joneses, you tend to become just another Jones. Don't ask me for any facts and figures, 'cause I ain't got none--it's just a gut feeling. Matt Gushee Oshamanbe, Hokkaido, Japan =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:02:38 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 07:52:11 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: David Kastrup Reply-To: David Kastrup Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 28 Jul 1997 14:45:05 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.93) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO dqua@san.rr.com (Derick J.R. Qua) writes: > Plus, two words: "STRUCTURED DOCUMENT" > > While Word will allow one to visually twiddle a document's fonts, line > spacing, letter spacing, put a graphic there, click on the smiley dog or > buggy-eyed paperclip to change headings, etc., TeX allows one to focus on > the content, structure and style of a document. This is extremely useful to > tech-doc. The closest WYSIWIG tools [that still produce inferior equation > quality to TeX] are FrameMaker and Interleaf (but these are multithousand > dollar programs under Unix, and shy of a thousand for Windows). Of course this is pretty wrong. TeX has no document structuring language, just pretty basic direct visual markup. It makes it possible to implement such a language, however. Fortunately, the most often used macro package, LaTeX, implements such a one just nicely. Another, entirely different structured markup, is delivered with the texinfo package. Please be sure not to be just talking of "TeX" when you rather mean a derived system such as LaTeX. You might be confusing people who don't know better. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:03:09 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 15:19:43 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Reply-To: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 28 Jul 1997 12:48:31 -0700 Message-ID: <5rit2f$797$1@helios.crest.nt.com> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In article , JL Doumont wrote: >Greetings. > >After programming TeX for almost 10 years, I now use it for virtually all >the documents I produce, from business letters to four-color corporate >documents, including, more recently, graphs (with log scales and all). >Despite the commercial success achieved with these documents, nontechnical >customers still ask me why I do not use Microsoft Office or Quark Xpress, >instead of that "watchacallit-TeX that nobody else uses." When I tell them >what's so great about TeX, they say you can do all that with MS Word style >sheets. > >I suppose some of you encounter similar skeptics, so my question is, do >you have any undisputable arguments or authoritative facts to quote in >those cases? Sure. ``Why do you use that acrylic lacquer thingamajing on your car? You can do it with semigloss latex which only costs around 20 bucks a gallon and can be brushed''. Note how latex reverses roles here. :) >Specifically, I am looking for any or all of the following: >- clear (observable) advantages of TeX over competitive systems; The chief observable advantage is the quality of the output. Programs like Word cannot format paragraphs properly, or handle simple things like discretionary breaks. TeX computes near optimal line breaks. It assigns a penalty to each break choice and if the penalty falls outside of a tolerance specified by the user, it will produce a diagnostic message. For starters, the very fact that TeX looks at your document as a whole, or nearly so, means that it can make much better decisions on how to format it. Interactive composition programs must make a formatting decision each time you type a character, and what's worse, they can never give up and say that something looks so bad that the page dimensions have to change, a tolerance has to be loosened or the paragraph has to be reworded. Instead, they apply some naive formula to make everything fit. One DTP program I was trying out, for example, started behaving strangely when I typed a word whose width exceeded that of a line. It started to squeeze the characters closer and closer together as I made the word longer, until it was unreadable! TeX does not suffer from such sophomore programming ailments. Secondary advantages are supreme stability and flexibility. TeX is free of bugs as far as anyone knows. The crop of popular PC software packages, on the other hand, is a swarming nest of glitches. Secondly, TeX changes very little over time. The major developments take place in some of the popular the macro packages, whereas the core ``engine'' remains the same. In short, TeX is mature software that has withstood the tests of time. It represents a mastery of a particular computer typesetting paradigm. The flexibility side of the equation is important too. By giving up the ability to construct documents via direct manipulation, you can do all kinds of things that are otherwise not possible. I already mentioned one advantage, which is that nice formatting is possible if the processing of the document is deferred rather than performed after the addition of each atomic element such as an individual character. In TeX, you can let the computer perform all kinds of calcula- tions, and to write constructs which adjust themselves to chang- ing circumstances. Suppose that you want to typeset a set of paragraphs such that each one ends with a horizontal rule that is at least an inch wide, followed by some material that is flush right__________________________________________________like this. How do you do this in Microsoft Word? How do you automate it? The rule must be at least one inch long regardless of what precedes it in paragraph, and must stretch to fill out the last line of the paragraph. Furthermore, the lines of the paragraph must not be too tight or too loose, and all hyphenations must be correct; in other words, you can't make a mess of the formatting just to make it easier to typeset the rule. Another kind of flexibility that may be important to some users is that it's easy to create programs or scripts whose output serves as input to TeX. I have, for instance, used TeX as a typesetting ``back end'' to generate invoices from a billing program. This is not easily possible with shrink-wrapped software packages, because they have proprietary file formats. What's worse, even if you adapt to their proprietary format, that format doesn't give you the programming flexibility of TeX, which means that you have to write much code that is very specific to the output format to get it to look right. That's assuming that we get around the hurdle of invoking some monstrous GUI program as a subordinate back-end for printing. My billing program only had TeX ``boiler plate'' files into which it would substitute the right text. The users were able to add support for HTML just by changing these files. >- awards won by TeX/Don Knuth or authoritative praise about TeX; >- estimation of the number of people using TeX worldwide. These kinds of things really don't matter unless belonging to a popular group matters more than getting your work done in a manner that satisfies your demands for precision. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:03:09 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 15:38:18 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Reply-To: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 28 Jul 1997 12:51:28 -0700 Message-ID: <5rit80$7a9$1@helios.crest.nt.com> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In article <33D922D9.5F9E@grc.varian.com>, Mirko Vukovic wrote: >Tex and latex were in their prime when the pc's and word were not >widespread and easily accesible. The mainframes and workstations did >not have word processors and tex/latex was the only way to publish a >high quality document. Today, PC's and word are wide spread and easily accessible. However, TeX remains the only way to publish a high quality document. :) =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:03:09 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 15:41:54 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Reply-To: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 28 Jul 1997 13:04:35 -0700 Message-ID: <5riu0j$7cd$1@helios.crest.nt.com> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In article <33D77A62.1A5B@cornell.edu>, Federico Waisman wrote: >Recently I had a discussion with a MS Word user and all the issues >that you brought can be done in Word. The only advantages that I see are >(1) multiplatform, (2) better equations and (3) zero $$$. > >> * clear, explicit separation of content from what >> defines document style >> >> * ability to split books, etc, into smaller more >> manageable pieces that are easily combined >> once writing is complete >> >> * ease with which a table of contents, bibliography >> and index can be generated > >All this can be done in MS Word, like bibliography with "end note", >table of contents, multi-documents, formatting, etc, etc. With the >advantage of WYSIWYG. Nonsense. Many of these things are added to TeX using external processors. These processors can be tuned to do just about anything. With Word, you get some fixed capability. What if you don't like how it handles bibliographies or indices? You can't please everyone simultaneously. Even in comp.text.tex we get plenty of queries about how to tweak something in LaTeX (or some other package) to do something slightly different. Microsoft Word can't even typeset a single paragraph properly, with ligatures, discretionary breaks and lines that are neither too loose nor too tight. It frequently produces lines that look like this. The software is completely unsuitable for any professional typesetting work. (Grandma's recipes and memos between managers are not professional typesetting work.) How do you adapt Microsoft Word to produce a page that simultaneously contains a quote from a complex musical score, a structural formula from organic chemistry, some calculus derivation, and text from several languages including Klingon? For brownie points, also typeset the first 100 prime numbers, but without calculating them outside of the software and typing them in: the software must produce them. >I am a user of LaTex/Tex and I will be using it, but let's be fair and >critize in an objective way. I hope you wont mind if we start with you, then. I object to your confusing WYSIWYG with DM (== Direct Manipulation). WYSIWYG means that what you see on the computer display is how your output will appear. Ironically, only with quality DVI previewers have I ever experienced true WYSIWYG. It is DM that you do not have with TeX. However, in TeX you create structures that are so intricate that a system for their direct manipulation isn't even conceivable without a loss of generality. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:03:09 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 15:42:00 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Reply-To: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 28 Jul 1997 13:10:43 -0700 Message-ID: <5riuc3$7ef$1@helios.crest.nt.com> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In article <5rd9r8$nit$1@readme.ican.net>, Patrick TJ McPhee wrote: >In article <33d81f7f.2154908@news.connext.net>, >Jeffrey McArthur wrote: > >% Word and most other word processors do not allow you to add comments to your >% source. > >To be fair, this is not correct. Most if not all major word processors >allow comments and annotations. May a Word virus eat your hard drive, you blasphemer. :) =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Tue Jul 29 08:03:09 1997 Archive-Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 15:42:04 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Reply-To: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 28 Jul 1997 13:15:47 -0700 Message-ID: <5riulj$7fl$1@helios.crest.nt.com> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO In article <5raoie$25d$1@news2.digex.net>, Michael Cohen wrote: >I have a friend and co-researcher in another city who introduced me to >LaTeX. She and I write joint papers sending the LaTeX documents back and >forth by regular e-mail. Some of these documents are fairly long, but we >have not had any problems. Aha. This reminds me of another important advantage: the ability to implement revision control and configuration management to organize your LaTeX work. The RCS system works with text files. It compresses the storage of revisions by keeping only the differences (deltas) between successive revisions. It can also produce a list of the differences between two revisions in diff format. With GNU RCS, I can do all kinds of neat things, like tag a particular set of revisions as belonging to a particular release of a document. I can have multiple people working on the same project with the help of the check in/check out discipline and locking How do you implement revision control in MS Word? How do you compute a compact listing of the differences between two similar MS Word files? =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Wed Jul 30 08:01:34 1997 Archive-Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 04:24:19 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: David Kastrup Reply-To: David Kastrup Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 29 Jul 1997 11:15:04 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.93) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) writes: > In article <5rd9r8$nit$1@readme.ican.net>, > Patrick TJ McPhee wrote: > >In article <33d81f7f.2154908@news.connext.net>, > >Jeffrey McArthur wrote: > > > >% Word and most other word processors do not allow you to add comments to your > >% source. > > > >To be fair, this is not correct. Most if not all major word processors > >allow comments and annotations. > > May a Word virus eat your hard drive, you blasphemer. :) Self-fulfilling prophesy. Word and the incredibly large documents (counting file space, not pages) it creates *do* eat up the hard drives. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Wed Jul 30 08:01:43 1997 Archive-Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 10:34:08 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: jon@campbellsci.com (Jon H. Trauntvein) Reply-To: jon@campbellsci.com (Jon H. Trauntvein) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 29 Jul 1997 07:41:07 -0600 Message-ID: To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO I have heard much about Word's "Standardness". I would just like to point out that it is difficult to convert even between different versions of Word. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Thu Jul 31 08:02:05 1997 Archive-Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 03:07:19 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Peter Rye Reply-To: Peter Rye Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 30 Jul 1997 00:34:43 +0100 Message-ID: To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO jon@campbellsci.com (Jon H. Trauntvein) writes: > > I have heard much about Word's "Standardness". I would just like to > point out that it is difficult to convert even between different > versions of Word. I couldn't agree more. This is one of TeX/LaTeX's biggest strengths from my point of view. I can move my files from a computer running MacOS, OS/2, DOS/Windows or Un*x and as long as I have a text editor available, I can do useful work. I certainly can't do this with Word, and if different versions are in use...well, good luck. I've even heard rumours that the latest Word is not capable of reading any of the old Word formats. -- Peter Rye Consultant in Paediatric Intensive Care, St. George's Hospital, London, UK Ph: +44 (0)181 725 1932 Fax: +44 (0)181 725 0089 ** Smoking areas in restaurants are like peeing areas in swimming pools. ** =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Thu Jul 31 08:02:05 1997 Archive-Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 09:50:19 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu Message-ID: <33DF53C3.79B1F1AC@ibm.net> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 10:46:27 -0400 From: David Ness Reply-To: dness@ibm.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO I'm not quite as sanguine about TeX/LaTeX in this regard. I have been a TeX user since the early 1980s, and I still am surprised about how much trouble we have moving TeX manuscripts around. I regularly get manuscripts from lots of different sources, and in a surprising (large) percentage of the circumstances the files don't work. This isn't an inherent fault of TeX/LaTex of course, but rather a result of different environments, missing style files, missing includes, particular (and peculiar) `specials', font naming convention differences, different directory structures, etc. For the most part, when I get `MSWord' files, they tend to be self-contained, and I have little trouble viewing them, even if they come from an earlier version of Word. Needless to say, I much prefer to work in TeX, and I wouldn't record my own `immortal' words in anything other than an ASCII-based system. This has allowed me to maintain my archives in readable---if not processable---form for more than 25 years, and TeX serves very well in this regard. Peter Rye wrote: > > jon@campbellsci.com (Jon H. Trauntvein) writes: > > > > > I have heard much about Word's "Standardness". I would just like to > > point out that it is difficult to convert even between different > > versions of Word. > > I couldn't agree more. > This is one of TeX/LaTeX's biggest strengths from my point of view. > > I can move my files from a computer running MacOS, OS/2, DOS/Windows > or Un*x and as long as I have a text editor available, I can do useful > work. > I certainly can't do this with Word, and if different versions are in > use...well, good luck. > I've even heard rumours that the latest Word is not capable of reading > any of the old Word formats. > > -- > Peter Rye > Consultant in Paediatric Intensive Care, St. George's Hospital, London, UK > Ph: +44 (0)181 725 1932 Fax: +44 (0)181 725 0089 > ** Smoking areas in restaurants are like peeing areas in swimming pools. ** =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Fri Aug 1 08:01:50 1997 Archive-Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 20:17:58 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: "Sylvia Wong" Reply-To: "Sylvia Wong" Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 1 Aug 1997 01:17:41 GMT Message-ID: <01bc9e18$d0865700$d5a11dcb@leowong> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Peter Rye wrote in article ... > I've even heard rumours that the latest Word is not capable of reading > any of the old Word formats. > This rumour is totally untrue. I have Office 97 (the latest verison of Word) on my home PC and Word 6.0 (2 versions before 97) at the university. I can exchange files between the two versions painlessly. For those of you who haven't used Word before, the fact is you can write and read documents in both WordPerfect and MS Word format. Documents in MS Word format are highly portable among PCs since most of them run some versions of Word or WordPerfect. I believe the portability problem with Word arise only if you want to port the document to a UNIX machine. Lots of Macs run MS Word as well and I guess they share the same format as their PC counterpart. -- Sylvia Wong =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sat Aug 2 08:01:52 1997 Archive-Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 04:09:52 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: David Kastrup Reply-To: David Kastrup Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 01 Aug 1997 11:04:18 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.93) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO "Sylvia Wong" writes: > Peter Rye wrote in article > ... > > I've even heard rumours that the latest Word is not capable of reading > > any of the old Word formats. > > > > This rumour is totally untrue. I have Office 97 (the latest verison of > Word) on my home PC and Word 6.0 (2 versions before 97) at the university. > I can exchange files between the two versions painlessly. I believe the problem was something like that if you opened a document with Word from the upcoming Office97, you had no possibility to ever read it again with earlier versions, or produce a document readable to other people with eariler versions. They have amended this somewhat, according to hearsay (it now simulates saving for earlier formats by using RTF, but seemingly some information goes down the drain in that process unnecessarily). All this, of course, on a strict rumour basis, as I'm using TeX and emacs exclusively. -- David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sat Aug 2 08:01:52 1997 Archive-Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 06:14:30 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: menrib@mensgi6.leeds.ac.uk (R I Bagnall) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Message-ID: <1997Aug1.103937.15182@leeds.ac.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Reply-To: menrib@sun.leeds.ac.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 11:39:37 +0100 (BST) To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO >> I've even heard rumours that the latest Word is not capable of reading >> any of the old Word formats. > > This rumour is totally untrue. I have Office 97 (the latest verison of > Word) on my home PC and Word 6.0 (2 versions before 97) at the university. > I can exchange files between the two versions painlessly. But universities often have an extended version of programs - here I could (if I so desired) not only read a Word2 file into Word6 but the otherway around too. This is because our uni has gotten hold of a 6->2 filter which Word2 users normally wouldn't have (since to have it, Word6 would have to have been around when they bought Word2 - which is extremely unlikely given the marketing practices). It would be very unlikely to be able to port from a later version to an earlier version without data loss in ANY application because the later version is usually brought out to add functionality that the earlier one wouldn't know about. There should never be a problem going from earlier to later versions if the s/w house has any programming skill. Rob. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sat Aug 2 08:01:12 1997 Archive-Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 09:13:31 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu Message-ID: <33E1EEC7.C1F58DF1@ibm.net> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 10:12:23 -0400 From: David Ness Reply-To: dness@ibm.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO The unfortunate problem with `heresay' is that it is often wrong. I find this thread rather startling for the amount of mis-information that is passed along by well-intentioned folks who frankly admit `no experience' but apparently have `knowledge'... My version of Word allows me to save for lots of previous versions of Word, should I wish... David Kastrup wrote: > > "Sylvia Wong" writes: > > > Peter Rye wrote in article > > ... > > > I've even heard rumours that the latest Word is not capable of reading > > > any of the old Word formats. > > > > > > > This rumour is totally untrue. I have Office 97 (the latest verison of > > Word) on my home PC and Word 6.0 (2 versions before 97) at the university. > > I can exchange files between the two versions painlessly. > > I believe the problem was something like that if you opened a document > with Word from the upcoming Office97, you had no possibility to ever > read it again with earlier versions, or produce a document readable to > other people with eariler versions. > > They have amended this somewhat, according to hearsay (it now > simulates saving for earlier formats by using RTF, but seemingly some > information goes down the drain in that process unnecessarily). > > All this, of course, on a strict rumour basis, as I'm using TeX and > emacs exclusively. > > -- > David Kastrup Phone: +49-234-700-5570 > Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Fax: +49-234-709-4209 > Institut für Neuroinformatik, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sat Aug 2 08:01:12 1997 Archive-Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 10:50:24 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Alan Shutko Reply-To: Alan Shutko Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 01 Aug 1997 10:43:09 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.106) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO >>>>> "David" == David Ness writes: David> The unfortunate problem with `heresay' is that it is often David> wrong. I find this thread rather startling for the amount of David> mis-information that is passed along by well-intentioned folks David> who frankly admit `no experience' but apparently have David> `knowledge'... Except in this case, it's true. For example, if you want to save something in Word 97 as Word 6 format, it will save an RTF file. They've released a patch, but that doesn't change the large installed base out there who can't save as Word 6. (http://www.microsoft.com/kb/articles/Q162/6/02.htm) 6. Q. Why is the Word 6.0/95 file larger than the original file? A. When you save a document from Microsoft Word 97 for Windows to Word 6.0/95 format, you generate a Rich Text Format (RTF) file. RTF is a text representation of a binary file. It is the format that most converters are based on. Because of its nature, RTF inherently generates a larger file than the original binary file when the document includes a great deal of formatting, pictures, or other objects. Relatively small documents containing little formatting and few objects may actually be smaller in Rich Text Format than in the native Word Document format. An updated version of the Word 6.0/95 export converter is now available. This converter will allow you to save from Microsoft Word 97 into a true Word 6.0 or 7.0 binary format. For more information on the updated export converter, including how to obtain it, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: ARTICLE ID: Q143480 TITLE: WD97: Updated Word 6.0/95 Export Converter Available -- Alan Shutko - By consent of the corrupted If *I* had a hammer, there'd be no more folk singers. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sat Aug 2 08:01:12 1997 Archive-Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 14:03:10 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu Message-ID: <33E23134.179A9F95@ibm.net> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 14:55:48 -0400 From: David Ness Reply-To: dness@ibm.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Not, apparently, on my machine. I just saved something from Word and designated Word6 format and got a file which is distinctly *not* RTF. I'm afraid I can't be sure if it is a Word6 file, of course, as I do not have that installed, but it sure `looks' (at least superficially) like a pretty normal Word file... So, maybe not always true? Alan Shutko wrote: > > >>>>> "David" == David Ness writes: > > David> The unfortunate problem with `heresay' is that it is often > David> wrong. I find this thread rather startling for the amount of > David> mis-information that is passed along by well-intentioned folks > David> who frankly admit `no experience' but apparently have > David> `knowledge'... > > Except in this case, it's true. > > For example, if you want to save something in Word 97 as Word 6 > format, it will save an RTF file. They've released a patch, but that > doesn't change the large installed base out there who can't save as > Word 6. > > (http://www.microsoft.com/kb/articles/Q162/6/02.htm) > > 6. Q. Why is the Word 6.0/95 file larger than the original file? > > A. When you save a document from Microsoft Word 97 for Windows to Word > 6.0/95 format, you generate a Rich Text Format (RTF) file. RTF is a > text representation of a binary file. It is the format that most > converters are based on. Because of its nature, RTF inherently > generates a larger file than the original binary file when the > document includes a great deal of formatting, pictures, or other > objects. > > Relatively small documents containing little formatting and few > objects may actually be smaller in Rich Text Format than in the > native Word Document format. > > An updated version of the Word 6.0/95 export converter is now > available. This converter will allow you to save from Microsoft Word > 97 into a true Word 6.0 or 7.0 binary format. > > For more information on the updated export converter, including how > to obtain it, please see the following article in the Microsoft > Knowledge Base: > > ARTICLE ID: Q143480 > TITLE: WD97: Updated Word 6.0/95 Export Converter Available > > -- > Alan Shutko - By consent of the corrupted > If *I* had a hammer, there'd be no more folk singers. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sat Aug 2 08:01:12 1997 Archive-Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 15:37:29 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: "Sylvia Wong" Reply-To: "Sylvia Wong" Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 1 Aug 1997 20:37:44 GMT Message-ID: <01bc9eba$df592bc0$e3f031ca@leowong> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Thanks for the information in the microsoft KB. I am not aware of the RTF problem and did not know that the "save as 6.0/95" format generates a RTF file instead of the native 6.0/95 format. But all the files I create in Office 97 (and save as 6.0/95 format) looks extremely normal when opened in Word 6.0. Might be the engineers at Microsoft have done a good job at disguising a RTF file as a Word document. :-) Anyway, I believe LaTeX and Word serve two different purposes and should not be compared directly. Both have its own strength and shortcomings. For example, I use LaTeX to write anything that has mathematics and images in it becuase of its superior ability to handle complex mathematics and floating objects. On the other hand, I use Word to write short letters and faxes becuase I have more control (or it's easier to control) over the visual appearance of my letter. -- Sylvia Wong =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sat Aug 2 08:01:34 1997 Archive-Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 15:52:05 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: "Sylvia Wong" Reply-To: "Sylvia Wong" Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 1 Aug 1997 20:47:31 GMT Message-ID: <01bc9ebc$3caad480$e3f031ca@leowong> To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Kaz Kylheku wrote in article <5riu0j$7cd$1@helios.crest.nt.com>... > Microsoft Word can't even typeset a single paragraph properly, with ligatures, > discretionary breaks and lines that are neither too loose nor too tight. > It frequently produces lines that look like > this. The software is completely unsuitable for any professional typesetting > work. (Grandma's recipes and memos between managers are not professional > typesetting work.) This is what I mean by Word and LaTeX serve two different purposes. LaTeX is designed for professional typesetting, while Word is for causal work such as Mum's memo or Dad's occasional letter to the council. Anyone who wants to do some serious writing should learn LaTeX. But if you intend to write only occasionaly (or all your letters are short and simple), Word is a good choice since it is easier to learn. -- Sylvia Wong =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Sun Aug 3 08:03:19 1997 Archive-Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 20:56:10 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Allin Cottrell Reply-To: Allin Cottrell Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 21:34:34 -0400 Message-ID: <33E3E02A.7311A1D4@wfu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO David Ness wrote: > > The unfortunate problem with `heresay' is that it is often wrong. I find > this thread rather startling for the amount of mis-information that is > passed along by well-intentioned folks who frankly admit `no > experience' but apparently have `knowledge'... > > My version of Word allows me to save for lots of previous versions of > Word, should I wish... > > David Kastrup wrote: Ah, but you didn't read what David K. wrote. It's true that MS Word N ships with filters that let you read and write Word N-M documents (for M > 0). But -- in general -- Word N-M can't handle Word N documents, unless the user of Word N happens to be savvy enough to save them in a suitable (and not the default) format. I have seen this often enough among my word-processor-using colleagues. Admittedly, something similar can happen among LaTeX users, but in most cases changing "\documentclass" to "\documentstyle" will make a new LaTeX document usable by somebody using an obsolete LaTeX setup. -- Allin Cottrell Department of Economics Wake Forest University, NC =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Mon Aug 4 08:02:15 1997 Archive-Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 08:06:56 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Peter Rye Reply-To: Peter Rye Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 02 Aug 1997 13:21:25 +0100 Message-ID: To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO "Sylvia Wong" writes: > This is what I mean by Word and LaTeX serve two different purposes. LaTeX > is designed for professional typesetting, while Word is for causal work > such as Mum's memo or Dad's occasional letter to the council. Anyone who > wants to do some serious writing should learn LaTeX. But if you intend to > write only occasionaly (or all your letters are short and simple), Word is > a good choice since it is easier to learn. I didn't mean to precipitate such an off topic discussion. Sorry. Could I just say that I agree completely with your last two posts. I do in fact use AmiPro/Word/WP/whatever for just this sort of thing, from time to time, as I suspect many of us do. Back to TeX & LaTeX .... -- Peter Rye Consultant in Paediatric Intensive Care, St. George's Hospital, London, UK Ph: +44 (0)181 725 1932 Fax: +44 (0)181 725 0089 ** Smoking areas in restaurants are like peeing areas in swimming pools. ** =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Mon Aug 4 08:02:15 1997 Archive-Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 14:21:41 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Weiqi Gao Reply-To: Weiqi Gao Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 14:22:37 -0500 Message-ID: <33E4DA7D.972AA28D@a.crl.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Juergen v. HAGEN wrote: > > another argument what I learned recently form a convinced Word user is > that on a PC the configurations of Word are (almost) always strictly > personal. So if you take your document and put on another PC you will > almost never have the same layout. I know that this is more a problem > of how you configured your Word and your PC, but I never had a problem > with putting my .sty, .cls and .tex files onto another LaTeX2e > implementation. 99% of Word users use the "factory configuration" of Word, which allows them to e-mail a Word document through MS Exchange without any loss of formatting elements. If everybody involved in an Word document transaction uses identical printers, they will even get identical printouts. :) -- Weiqi Gao weiqigao@a.crl.com =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Mon Aug 4 08:01:05 1997 Archive-Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 20:09:39 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: yamato@yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp (Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji) Reply-To: yamato@yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp (Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji) Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 4 Aug 1997 01:07:10 GMT Message-ID: To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Comparing TeX with MS Word is not a very fair thing because these are very different. 1. TeX has two functions --- typesetting (line breaking and page composition) and macroing. Text editing is left to something else. 2. MS Word is an integrated system. It is primarily a text editor, but has limited(in the sense it does so in a poor way) typesetting capabilities as well. It also works fine with other MS Office modules like Excel, etc. As for the programming, BASIC is the language, which is supposed to be easy. If I were to convince others to use TeX, I would need to know whether they need to typeset the page in a professional way. I guess what most people really need is a simple text editor like "Notepad". It would take years of experience learning the art of typesetting. You may find the right hand page a little darker than the left and be able to fix the spacing manually using your favorite software (QuarkXpress is perhaps the only software for the Japanese language. TeX for the Japanese language is still unprofessional). Some software claim they can adjust the page breaking algorithm automatically, but it is always up to you to see whether the final result looks all right or not. In a series of posting under this Subject, most of the argument went round the macro capability of TeX (I am tired of hearing LaTeX2e has such and such style, ...), but how about the BASIC of MS Word? Ignoring it is unfair. Incidentally, I cannot feel like learnign BASIC (My first impression with MS BASIC has been so bad -- Algol68 was a lot better) and also don't feel like relying TeX macros too much as I prefer using preprocessors before executing TeX. Just my comments. No need for responses. Cheers, Tsuji P.S. I sometimes need to run MS Word in order to read files sent from others. When I last tried to edit a line, a lower case input was automatically changed to upper case because it was after a dot. I was so terrified by this "kindness" that I immediately shutdown the system without ever thinking of changing the default option. If the printer/editor tampers my script that way, I will rather change the shop than ask them not to do so. =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Mon Aug 4 08:01:05 1997 Archive-Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 21:27:49 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Weiqi Gao Reply-To: Weiqi Gao Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 21:28:11 -0500 Message-ID: <33E53E3B.9D8C5C3E@a.crl.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji wrote: > > Incidentally, I cannot feel like learnign BASIC (My first impression with > MS BASIC has been so bad -- Algol68 was a lot better) and also don't feel > like relying TeX macros too much as I prefer using preprocessors before > executing TeX. I wrote a macro package in WinWord 2.0 a couple of years ago. The user is forever tied to the WinWord 2.0 version, as the macros simply doesn't work under WinWord 6.0 and I don't have time to do the conversion. -- Weiqi Gao weiqigao@a.crl.com =========================================================================== From owner-ctt-digest@SHSU.edu Mon Aug 4 08:01:05 1997 Archive-Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 22:07:09 EST Sender: owner-tex-news@SHSU.edu From: Alan Shutko Reply-To: Alan Shutko Subject: Re: Convincing the skeptics... Date: 03 Aug 1997 22:04:16 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.106) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII To: tex-news@SHSU.EDU Status: RO >>>>> "D" == David Ness writes: D> Not, apparently, on my machine. I just saved something from Word D> and designated Word6 format and got a file which is distinctly D> *not* RTF. I'd guess that like so many other MS stuff, they're shipping an updated version only noticable by a revision number hidden somewhere. ===========================================================================