I was going to write a rant against MSWord, but hasn't that been done to death?
Anyway, I much prefer WordPerfect, but I've been gradually (and painfully) switching to Word. Not because I want to, but because it seems I have to. Since just about everybody else uses Word, and Word does not do a very good job of converting WordPerfect documents (I mean, it mucks up the formatting in some serious ways -- whereas WordPerfect does a fine job of converting Word documents)...well, there is no point in postponing the inevitable: I must capitulate to the global hegemony of Bill Gates. This is not about some impulse to conformity ("and if Jimmy walked off a cliff, would you follow...?"), but about sending essays and chapters and the like to colleagues and editors, all of whom use Word. On the brighter side, I hear they're finally retiring that silly little Clippit thing, which I hate with a passion normally reserved for baby-killers and brutal dictators (what an insult to the user's intelligence! yes, I'd like to see a paperclip winking and leering at me while I'm trying to figure out why in the heck this program lacks "reveal codes".)
Okay, I guess that did turn into a mini-rant.
You're a brave soul to post about software.
Word and WordPerfect are definitely not your only choices. OpenOffice (free download from openoffice.org) is a nice WYSIWYG program that is, as far as I've been able to tell, compatible with Word and WordPerfect. And people who really care about such things won't use anything but TeX (Kieran Healy has posted about his word processing software a few times).
This page attempts to win converts to TeX.
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html
Don't you think Clippy deserves more hatred than that?
I use WordPerfect whenever I'm going to just need to submit in pdf format, or when I'm working with someone who has a Mac, because for some odd reason, Word for Windows and Word for Mac are not compatible.
But sadly I am being pulled away from the far far better word processor for the same reasons as you are. (Word stole all its good ideas -- I don't know why it didn't also steal reveal codes.)
Posted by: whatish at July 7, 2003 06:48 PM*die, Clippy, die*
whatish, that is very strange, as I use a Mac and I've never had compatibility issues -- at least with files I _receive_. It's usually my friends with PCs who ask me to convert files for them.
I too hate "clippy" and his ilk -- but in Word 2000 they can be disabled. 2000 is not so bad -- Word 98 stunk to the heavens and beyond (gee, who thought it would be a _good_ idea to put footnotes on a different page than the reference mark???). 2000 is a big bloaty beast, though, like many recent programs. (Don't get me started on browsers.) I miss the find-text-in-an-unopened-file function of Word 5, but have learned to make do with BBEdit. Word isn't evil, but it is not elegant, either.
D. loves Claris/AppleWorks and steadfastly refuses to change. If I liked the interface better I'd agree; it's nice to have a program that can run in RAM (i.e. without overspinning the drive and using up my battery). I do use it for taking notes in archives, for just that reason.
Posted by: Rana at July 7, 2003 07:29 PMEmacs + LaTeX = typeset goodness in portable text files. Yum. But I do not evangelise much, because shifting your writing environment is a huge investment. I was lucky to be put on A Good Path early on.
On a different note, if you hate Clippy you may like this and this and especially this.
Posted by: Kieran Healy at July 7, 2003 08:07 PMOkay, I've read the "Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient" rant, and I absolutely agree with the following:
To be blunt, we're looking at a situation in which MS Word is poised to become, for much of the world, the standard for the preparation of documents using computers. But Word is a standard that has little to commend it other than the fact that it is (or aspires to be) a standard.
But I don't think I'm ready to join the typesetting software avant garde. Sure, it does sound appealing, but how would it solve my problem? -- the problem being that everyone now wants things in Word ('send two hard copies and one disk copy in Microsoft Word'...).
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at July 7, 2003 08:11 PMKieran,
The third one sends a chill down my spine: it captures the malevolent spirit that lurks in the hollows of that animated paperclip.
Ditto for Excel and Powerpoint. People complain endlessly about Microsoft's OS domination, but it's really MS Office that everyone should be worried about. As you've noticed, it just doesn't matter if there's a better solution out there, you have to use Word/Excel/Powerpoint if you have any intention of sharing your work with others.
The good news is that, really, Word isn't that bad. Easy for me to say, I know, but once you learn it it's just another piece of software. And Clippy, supremely annoying though he is, can be disabled....
Posted by: Kevin Drum at July 7, 2003 08:20 PMBy the way, my experience has been that *most* standards have little to recommend them aside from the very fact of being a standard. I suppose there's a counterexample out there somewhere, but I can't think of one offhand.
Posted by: Kevin Drum at July 7, 2003 08:24 PMI have disabled clippy too, but various other default features enrage me. For example, Word routinely changes the (Chinese) word hsi (h-s-i)to his, and unpredictably changes the font back to Times New Roman, and for no good reason will change the margins or font size I've set. I've learned to avoid or work around most of these problems, but it's still annoying.
I'm pretty sure clippy gives bad grammatical advice at times. As I remember, he sometimes wants verbs to agree with the nearest preceding noun, rather than the subject of the sentence. He's also fanatical and dogmatic about "which" vs. "that".
Posted by: zizka at July 7, 2003 09:48 PMWhenever I am forced to use Word it takes me about 10 minutes to "disable" all the so-called helpful features (e.g., the stupid paperclip, spell correction, grammar, automatic style application). Since I use (or used to use) Frame for my livelihood, I tend to use it because it's familiar. I've used TeX and enjoyed its fantastic control over the very materiality of the word and its place in the text. Although it's a bit early, you might want to look at DocBook, too. I read the anti-WYSIWYG rant a while back but was not convinced.
Posted by: jim at July 7, 2003 09:59 PM"I'm pretty sure clippy gives bad grammatical advice at times."
And I'm pretty sure he does it on purpose (I'm telling you: that paperclip is evil).
Font changes? Don't even get me started.
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at July 7, 2003 10:12 PMI'd recommend using ed.
If that's not available, use vi (but it's cheating to read the documentation).
Posted by: Chun the Unavoidable at July 7, 2003 10:46 PMBtw, can anyone suggest a good MSWord manual? Not a dummies guide, but something dull and comprehensive, with endlessly tedious (but useful) detail.
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at July 8, 2003 12:05 AMI usually warn my students to ignore MS Word's grammatical advice, since it's not only bad (what does it have against complex sentences?) but genuinely random (it usually misses subject-verb disagreement and tense shifts). Right now, it's doing really bizarre things with the size of the footnote numbers in my book manuscript--which is a problem when you have to do CRC. Bleh. And British spellings cause particular pain and suffering, since Word keeps "correcting" them. ("No, no, no! I meant 'honour', not 'honor'!")
Posted by: Miriam at July 8, 2003 12:09 AMIt sounds as if you're not looking for alternatives to Word.
This page explains how to regain some of the functionality of "reveal codes." The beginning about paragraphs marks and "what's this" is pretty helpful (says Word 97, but it's all still true).
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/ec/reveal/reveal.htm
And the plugin on this page may also be helpful, though I can't tell because I've never used WordPerfect.
http://www.softwareplugins.com/
Posted by: ogged at July 8, 2003 12:11 AMThanks very much, Ogged.
Miriam, WordPerfect is smarter: no problem with British spellings (nor with French spellings, for that matter). Footnotes and endnotes are a breeze, fonts behave properly, margins stay in place...I could go on and on. But your publisher wants the manuscript in Word, right?
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at July 8, 2003 12:16 AMHey, I use wWord, because everyone else does -- but miss Nota Bene and WP. If not for those programs, I wouldn't have found HTML at all understandable. But really, as long as you're willing to go in and save a bunch of options on first use, I don't think Word is *that* horrendous. Certainly not as bad as the Powerpoint presentations the book reps keep trying to give us!
Posted by: Another Damned Medievalist at July 8, 2003 12:23 AMDoes WP not give you the love you want when you
ask it to save something in a Word format?
It's done that for me so far.
Alas, my publisher indeed wants Word, Word, and only Word.
If WP believes in British spellings, though, I should look into a future conversion experience...
Posted by: Miriam at July 8, 2003 12:58 AMMSWord, like Outlook, is Evil. Turn off FastSave (Options/Preferences, depending on your version, then Open and Save) because it doesn't save much time, and leads to file corruption (and appends data to your file that you really might not want to be public). Turn off Auto Formatting unless you like being told what to do by a computer. The grammer checker is really more of a toy than something to be used by an academic who is fluent in English. The more complicated your syntax, the less effective the checker is. Let's not even talk about the idiocy of "readability" measures.
For a book, I'd suggest the VisualQuickStart guide from PeachPit/IDG.
I'd suggest, on a Windows computer, using WordPerfect, and thinking about buying DataViz PCConvert if you really need to send MSWord files to publishers and the like. WordPerfect tends to do a very good job of conveting to and from MSWord.
But RTF (Rich Text Format) works well for exchanging files. The exception would be publishers or colleagues who use Word's Tracking and Commenting tools--those don't really convert well. It's doable, but you need to mess with the file.
On a Mac, AppleWorks is tolerable, but both Nisus and MarinerWrite are probably better for most academics.
Posted by: Lisa Spangenberg at July 8, 2003 01:08 AMIt's interesting that you are arguing against Word--I have been struggling with TeX (one of the alternate programs that folks here advocate) and have decided to stick with Word/InDesign for my typesetting projects. TeX is not a good tool for working with poetry, anyway. I have more comments on this at my blog.
WP is a good tool, though I'm more experienced and comfortable with Word these days. The bigger concern about WP is Corel's continuing viability as a company. They are been taken private, so hopefully that will allow them to develop a viable strategy. WP and Corel Draw are excellent products, but the company has hopped on so many bandwagons that it's really unclear what they stand for. Linux? XML, their current thrust? This seems unlikely to pan out, in my view, since most businesses don't have much use for XML in their daily operations (Dorothea, if you're reading, please correct me if I'm wrong). Corel actually had a promising direction as a graphics-focused company with a strong presence in the Windows and Mac markets when they bought Kai's Power Tools and Painter, but this direction seems to have fizzled out (though they still sell the products under an incoherent marketing strategy).
Regarding Corel/XML: I don't kow what Corel's current strategy is regarding XML, but the next version of Word will use an XML format natively, so most businesses will be using it day-to-day. (The fact that this is an egregious abuse of XML is a rant for another day. I don't even want to think about how text boxes will be implemented.)
I second the suggestion to use RTF.
Posted by: E. Naeher at July 8, 2003 11:34 AMLooking back I see that it was a mistake to switch from wp to w in the middle of a dissertation, but it's sure a hoot to change all of those conversion artifacts. This and my irritating habit of leaving out crucial parts of references in drafts ensure that someone's having less fun than you are.
Miriam - honor/honour: I set the language to "English (UK)" and "honour" became the accepted spelling, "honor" tagged instead. (Tools - Language - [select the language you want] - Default.)
I was mildly entertained, in the terrifying Autocorrect default list, to see "can't of been" -> "can’t have been"; an automatic translator between informal speech, eg IMs, and formal written speech would be funny if it worked. (Funny both ways, you see: it would imply that informal speech doesn't have any special flexibility or creativity.)
It should be possible to put all the preferences of a WP user into a MSW template and carry it around with you. Subvert the Borg! I'm surprised there isn't an disgruntlemen's network doing that already.
However, beyond technical fixes, I agree it is worrying that there's so much lock-in based on file sharing. I think the Feds could have harnessed MSFT - and other software cos. - better by picking a not-bleeding-edge file format standard early on and requiring that all public data be available in it.
Posted by: clew at July 8, 2003 06:37 PMWow! Religious wars over word processors.
First let us dispose of one idea quickly.
"Emacs + LaTeX = typeset goodness in portable text files" is not true.
EMACS + LaTex = MADNESS
These are computer programs for mad computer geniuses. If you want to write letters, articles and memos, you do not want to wrestle with them. LaTex was invented by a Stanford University computer science professor, who is widely acknowledged to be the worlds greatest authority on computer science, to allow him to typeset his own books in his five volume series on computer science. If you have not read those books and understood them, stick with an ordinary word processor. Likewise with EMACS which is called a text editor. So is Windows Notepad. But this is like saying that my Honda Accord and an Indy 500 race car are both automobiles. Any able bodied man is capable of driving the Honda, but most of us could not get the race car around the block, much less drive it at 250 mph. If you are not a computer programmer, do not hassle with EMACS.
A plug. For text editing I use Edit Pad Lite from:
http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html
The program may be downloaded from that web site and is free for non commercial use. It is easy to use, but is a lot more powerful than Notepad. Unlike Notepad it does not choke on large files.
The guy who wrote "I'd recommend using ed. If that's not available, use vi (but it's cheating to read the documentation)." Is malicious. These are primitive Unix text editors. Ignore him. First they turn you into a UNIX then you begin to LISP.
Second. Word. I am still using Word 95. I switched from Word 6.0 to 95 (which Microsoft calls Word 7.0, but which really ought to be 6.1) because Word 95 can handle long file names and 6.0 could not.
Word 6.0 was probably an improvement over Word 2.0 (there were no 3, 4, or 5 versions), but since Word 95, everything Microsoft has done has been progress in reverse. Word 95 does everything I need it to do, I have tons of old Word 2.0, 6.0 and 95 documents and I am happy with it.
The fly in the ointment. I have installed a program from Microsoft that allows 95 to open Word 97 documents. It works on Word 97 and 2000 documents but it chokes on Word XP documents. This is a pain, but I can work around it, so I am not about to switch because of it.
I have copies of Word 97 and my kids use it. They report no problems. If you want to move back (forward) to Word 97, computer tent sales and similar forums (fora?) often have old disks cheap. There are converter packs that enable Word 97/2000/XP to open Word perfect documents with greater facility. Try downloading and installing them:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;212265
Everybody hates Clippy, but you do not have to install it and, if you have your installation disk you can uninstall it. Look in the tools segment, it is called Office Assistant. You can increase the speed of Office 97 and your computer by disabling fast find which is installed will ye or nill ye. Just delete the fast find icon from the start menu programs/start up tab.
Third. Word Perfect. Until a few years ago a lot of lawyers (and I are one) used Word Perfect. Because DOS Word Perfect 5.1 dominated law firms for a long time a lot of them got to be Word Perfect junkies. When Windows came along, they switched to Word Perfect for Windows 6.0 which was not a very good program.
The real DOS Word Perfect 5.1 junkies got to the point where they could do the codes without the WYSIWYG and they were happy with the DOS version. When their firms switched to Word they were unhappy, because Word is a very different program. Word Perfect is like HTML without style sheets. All formatting is coded in visible ASCII characters, like left angle bracket b right angle bracket for bold, which are found in line with the semantic content. If you have a formatting problem it is possible to diagnose and solve it by looking at the raw ASCII stream.
Word is more like HTML with style sheets. Some codes are retained, e.g. ^p in Word = left angle bracket p right angle bracket in HTML, but a lot of formatting information is contained in styles which are associated with locations in the semantic content, this is similar to CSS in HTML. Programmer’s like this arrangement and even more recent programs like Open Office, which is based on XML -- the follow on to HTML, use it more consistently and do not have any in line codes. But, the downside is that Word Perfect code hackers have lost a powerful tool in this transition.
Sometimes the only way to fix a file that has developed formatting poltergeists in Word is to cut and paste the text into a pure text editor which gets rid of the formating and then cut and past it back to a new document template in Word and reformat it with styles.
If you are using a Word Perfect version (I think they are up to 11 or 12), and you can use it to open, edit, and save Word documents. Why not stick with it? Just remember to save as a Word document before forwarding it to somebody else. We know that Microsoft Word does not do a good job with opening Word Perfect documents. You may wish to try
Historical Note:
http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/glossary.html#scriptio
"Ancient Greek was written in upper case characters with virtually no word or sentence division and without punctuation."
This was probably less true of Semitic languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic) see:
http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/archives/1996b/msg00125.html
In this respect formatting text is a modern innovation, related to the adoption of moveable type printing.
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/wgbw/apparaat/structdev.html
also:
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/baai/gsl/markup.htm
Fourth: Other word processors. There a number of them floating around out there Check:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Office_Suites/
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Word_Processors/
Open Office is perhaps the best known of the lot. It has been developed under the auspices of Sun Computers, which repackages it with support as Star Office 6.0. It is still a work in progress (e.g. regular expression search does not work yet, there is no Word Perfect converter, although Star Office may have one) but it does a great job of opening Word files of any vintage, and the price (free) is right. If you do not get Word from your employer or as a package with a new computer (see above for older versions of Word), do not pay $200 for a retail version download Open Office and use it.
to get rid of 'Clippy' and its kin, see http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article08-100
regarding your request for a good detailed manual, I'd recommend Walter Glenn, Word 2000 in a Nutshell (O'Reilly, 2000) -- though I agree that the Visual Quickstart guide from Peachpit Press is very good
Posted by: David Mackinder at July 8, 2003 07:09 PM"Word Perfect is like HTML without style sheets...
Word is more like HTML with style sheets."
Aha! If I were a cartoon character (and for all you know, I might be...), you would see one of those little lightbulbs switching on in my head. I think I now get something about the difference between the two.
Posted by: Invisible Adjunct at July 8, 2003 09:19 PMHas anyone else had experience with Word XP? So far, it seems like everyone is talking about their experience with earlier versions.
I agree that after Word 95 it started to go downhill. But then it started to come back up with 2000 and then got much better with XP. I've got some mileage out of selecting "More..." from the styles pulldown. It lists Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. Makes me feel like I'm writing in HTML. If I want to change all h4's, I can right click it in the styles sidebar. Makes dumping the document into Dreamweaver or InDesign a cinch.
I'm sure you can confabulate it to start with the styles sidebar, but I haven't gotten around to it. You've got your block elements and style sheets right there, which I would think would be groovy for the net-savvy.
Posted by: chutney at July 8, 2003 10:40 PM#27 Our Esteemed Hostess:
Thanks. You made my day.
#28 Chutney:
Word XP? Dreamweaver? your employer is very generous. Count youself lucky. Me, I pay for it myself. I buy second hand computers ($90 for a PIII 450 IBM NetStation a couple of weeks ago) and use obsolete bargin bin software and free downloads. WFM.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 8, 2003 11:24 PM>EMACS + LaTex = MADNESS
These are computer programs for mad computer geniuses. If you want to write letters, articles and memos, you do not want to wrestle with them.
well, changing programs every six months
is what looks like madness to me. i've been
contentedly writing letters and articles
in TeX for ten years and never once needed
an upgrade. all that "style sheet" stuff
further on is madness much magnified:
open source = freedom.
in a small fraction of the time it takes
to "just" download such-and-such and tweak
this-and-that misfeature to (temporarily)
disable some crippling bug, one may instead
once for all learn some *very simple* coding:
i'm sure no "mad computer genius" and indeed
know much less about word processors than
r. schwartz -- i haven't *had* to learn
all this planned-obsolescence obfuscation
just to keep up with my writing routines.
of course "religious wars" of this kind
are essentially pointless; i won't follow up
on this thread . . . but harder is harder
and easier is easier.
Doing my history diss in LaTeX and emacs was EASY. Doing it with M$Wurd was maddening.
I am not a genius of any sorts.
'nuff said.
che
Posted by: che at July 9, 2003 08:16 AMWord 6.0 was probably an improvement over Word 2.0 (there were no 3, 4, or 5 versions)
This must only apply if we're talking PCs. I've been a Mac user since college and began with Word 4 and upgraded up to Word 5.1.a and beyond.
Posted by: Rana at July 9, 2003 10:56 AMI would rather have stayed with 5.1.a, for what it's worth, but some of the (essential to me at least) functions stopped working when I moved it onto an "extended" hard drive configuration (the new PowerBook standard).
*sniff*
#30
"well, changing programs every six months
is what looks like madness to me. i've been
contentedly writing letters and articles
in TeX for ten years and never once needed
an upgrade."
Using a word processor is not the same as upgrading every six months. As I said above I have used Word 6.0 and 95 (the only difference is the integration of the later in to Windows 9X) for about 9 years. OTOH, I note that GNU EMACS is on version 21, so you could upgrade that program every six months also:-)
The only time I changed to Word Perfect was when my former employer 2.0, which used Windows 3.1 and Word 6.0, went tits up and I moved to former employer 3.0, which used Windows 95 and Word Perfect 6.0. At home and in my own business I have used Win98SE (had to switch to use Hard Disks > 2GB) and Word 95 for a long time. No upgrades.
"all that "style sheet" stuff further on is madness much magnified:"
This is a matter of taste. My needs are so simple that it makes no difference to me. Frankly, I have never really learned how to use style sheets. I further note that style sheets are not unique to Word but are used in HTML and Open Office also.
"open source = freedom."
I like open source programs. They are often priced very affordably. I am using an open source browser and mail program Mozilla to view this web page. But open source vs. proprietary does not decide this question. There are open source word processors that work like Word (Open Office).
"in a small fraction of the time it takes
to "just" download such-and-such and tweak
this-and-that misfeature to (temporarily)
disable some crippling bug, one may instead
once for all learn some *very simple* coding:"
reminds me of an old Sesame Street schtick. Itsak Perlman and a little girl get up on stage and play their violins. Perlman, of course mounts the stage with enormous difficulty and plays the violin with great dexterity and the little girl bounces up on to the stage and plays the violin like a beginning student. Perlman ends the piece by saying some things that are easy for you are hard for me and some things that are hard for me are easy for you.
"i'm sure no "mad computer genius" and indeed
know much less about word processors than
r. schwartz"
Don't bet on it. I will not surrender the title of Village Idiot willingly.
#31
"Doing my history diss in LaTeX and emacs was EASY. Doing it with M$Wurd was maddening. I am not a genius of any sorts."
See above for easy and difficult. I never wrote a dissertation, but I remember very well when my wife wrote hers. We were not yet then married, but she did a lot of her typing (yes typing on a Smith Corona) at my place because I had air conditioning. When she finished typing, proofreading and correcting she turned it over to a dissertation typist who typed the final copy in the proper format. That was hard -- and expensive. Using Word seems easier and cheaper than that.
#32
"This must only apply if we're talking PCs."
You are correct the Mac version numbers have been different. The programs are different and the file formats are different. you may have to add a converter to PC word to be able to use Mac Word files.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 9, 2003 02:15 PM"You are correct the Mac version numbers have been different. The programs are different and the file formats are different."
That's really not the case, nor has it been for a few years. The core code is identical on all the platforms MSWord runs on, since Word 2000. The interfaces are of course different. They've made a very deliberate effort to match keyboard commands and menus as well, as much as is possible.
Documents are interchangeable from Word on one platform and Word on another (though exotic fonts have to be special cased), and on versions of MSWord since 2000, even the special mark up features, like Tracking and Comments carry over perfectly.
Posted by: at July 9, 2003 06:39 PMJust to be pedantic, but Donald Knuth, professor emeritus at Stanford, invented TeX, but somebody else created LaTeX, which is basically a bunch of macros on top of TeX to make it easier to use. Knuth explained that TeX was designed as a page layout language that was to be generated by other easier-to-use, frontend software. Nobody's got around to that, yet. It seems to me that most people who complain about Word processors usually don't take the time to create and use stylesheets. They use the program as though it were a typewriter, doing ad hoc markup as they go along. I have used Word since one of its DOS version in the late '80s, and each successive version has been worse than the previous ones. Disclaimer: I've used vi, nroff, TeX, LaTeX, Word (DOS, Windows, MacOS), WordPerfect, Ventura Publisher (under Gem OS), PageMaker, Interleaf (Solaris) and FrameMaker. For writing book-length technical documents, I prefer FrameMaker. With all the hoopla over XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, I'd keep my eye on DocBook. (http://www.docbook.org/)
Posted by: jim at July 10, 2003 12:24 PM#35
"The core code is identical on all the platforms MSWord runs on, since Word 2000. The interfaces are of course different. They've made a very deliberate effort to match keyboard commands and menus as well, as much as is possible.
Documents are interchangeable from Word on one platform and Word on another (though exotic fonts have to be special cased), and on versions of MSWord since 2000, even the special mark up features, like Tracking and Comments carry over perfectly."
Like I said, I stopped at Office 97 and you had to use a converter then. Thanks for the info.
#36
"Just to be pedantic, but Donald Knuth, professor emeritus at Stanford, invented TeX, but somebody else created LaTeX, which is basically a bunch of macros on top of TeX to make it easier to use. Knuth explained that TeX was designed as a page layout language that was to be generated by other easier-to-use, frontend software. Nobody's got around to that, yet."
I have heard about, but not used:
"LyX is an advanced open source document processor running on many Unix platforms. It is called a "document processor", because unlike standard word processors, LyX encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX lets you concentrate on writing, leaving details of visual layout to the software. LyX automates formatting according to predefined rule sets, yielding consistency throughout even the most complex documents. LyX produces high quality, professional output -- using LaTeX, an open source, industrial strength typesetting engine, in the background."
"It seems to me that most people who complain about Word processors usually don't take the time to create and use stylesheets. They use the program as though it were a typewriter, doing ad hoc markup as they go along."
That would be me, sad to say. Of course, I havent really needed to either. It seems to me that a lot of people undestand the Word Perfect/HTML in-line command model more intuitivly than they understand style sheets.
"I have used Word since one of its DOS version in the late '80s, and each successive version has been worse than the previous ones."
I never used DOS Word, but I am prepared to believe that it was better than WfW.
"Disclaimer: I've used vi, nroff, TeX, LaTeX, Word (DOS, Windows, MacOS), WordPerfect, Ventura Publisher (under Gem OS), PageMaker, Interleaf (Solaris) and FrameMaker. For writing book-length technical documents, I prefer FrameMaker."
You have serious experience. what do you use for a three page letter?
"With all the hoopla over XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, I'd keep my eye on DocBook. (http://www.docbook.org/)"
So I went to look at the web site, phew! I really could not make heads or tails out of it.
Posted by: robert Schwartz at July 10, 2003 11:47 PM"You have serious experience. what do you use for a three page letter?"
I use Frame, but that's because I have it installed, I hate Word, I'm used to it, and I usually don't need to do much of anything in a letter but type paragraphs and thus don't need to set up some complicated stylesheet. This is, admittedly, overkill. I wouldn't suggest buying and learning Frame to type 3 page letters. If Word is installed, use that. Once you've turned off Clippy, grammar checking, automatic reformatting, etc., it's almost usable for short pieces of text. My hatred for Word came about slowly but surely because it is next to impossible to author book-length documents, which I used to do for a living. Frame, TeX / LaTeX, PageMaker are all overkill for memos and letters. Use a good text editor, and I really wouldn't suggest Emacs. (Just too cranky.) There's TextPad, PFE, jEdit, and a host of other share- and freeware plain text editors out there that'll do the job. Of course you won't get italics and bold and strange fonts, but who needs to clutter up their letter writing with that?
"So I went to look at the [DocBook] web site, phew! I really could not make heads or tails out of it."
It's complicated to be sure, but no worse than TeX / LaTeX, I'd say. (Also, the site seems to be down at the moment.) DocBook is for doing longer technical documents and allows for something called single-sourcing. That is authoring in XML and converting with XSL to different formats and media. (For example, I need a manual that's going to be printed and in HTML for the web, PDAs, and cell phones.) Again, not too useful for epistolary writing.
One word processor I installed and used briefly was AbiWord. It's free and worked fairly well. It was just too much of a Word clone for me to stomach. But if you're trying not to use Microsfot products it's one way to go.
jim: thanks for your well-informed posts
(and link to what looks like a fine blog).
i've promised not to rejoin the battle and won't.
but i've just posted an old piece i wrote (short!)
that ties in with this stuff so well that
i can't resist putting a link right here:
http://members.aol.com/vlorbik/tenpage/backq.html
.
LaTeX was written by Leslie Lamport; now the LaTeX3 project team has taken over development: Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, Michael Downes, Robin Fairbairns, Frank Mittelbach, Chris Rowley, Rainer Schöpf and Martin Schröder.
Another TeX application, BiBTeX, is still the best bibliographical program around.
Someone mentioned this at the beginning, but nobody came back to it, so I figured I might as well. I switched to OpenOffice.org (OOo) about a year ago, and have never looked back. I keep Word on my PC now only because I might someday want to use some of the advanced features of EndNote--otherwise, it's all OOo. OOo opens and saves Word-formatted documents (as well as Excel-format, and can open--but not save--PowerPoint files) as well as various other formats, including exporting PDF's. In a lot of ways, OOo is easier to use than Word (after unlearning some Word habits), and since the interface looks and feels as much like Word as WP's does, it's pretty easy to find something when differences pop up.
Now, I'm a pretty advanced computer user, but the real test came when my computer-phobe girlfriend started using OOo on my PC, and after a few times asked me to install OOo on her laptop as well. Which I could do, without a twinge of capitalism-destroying fear, because in addition to being a great piece of software, OOo is absolutely free (as in beer *and* as in freedom).
It really is a fine piece of software, at least in the same league as Word and WP, without the price or the MS guilt.
Posted by: Dustin at July 22, 2003 04:50 AMIf you want portability, you can use word perfect or MS word and save as a rich text file (*.rtf). It keeps your formatting and can be read by every program under the sun.
Posted by: William Morriss at July 22, 2003 06:11 PMSomeone sent me a wordperfect (WP) attachment. I have w2k-professional. How do I convert the WP documnet to MSWord?
Posted by: Krishna at December 27, 2003 10:05 AM
