MS Word 2010 Takes On TeX 674
alphabetsoup writes "Office 2010 Technology preview was leaked a few days back. With its leak, a feature which was rumored to be present can now be confirmed. Office 2010 finally adds support for Advanced Typographic features (ligatures, number forms, alternates, etc.) of OpenType, allowing one to create documents so far possible only in TeX or InDesign. Between this, the new equation editor and styles, what are the chances of Word replacing LaTeX as the editor of choice in academia?"
Low (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Low (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Low (Score:5, Informative)
Except for the fact that MS Word is more widely used than TeX
Not for professional, publication quality work.
most people who use TeX probably have word as well (Show me a university that doesn't provide a new copy to every single faculty)
I am not aware of MS word for Linux, which is the OS of choice, at least in science departments. Plus, unless they also improved the equation editor since whatever version shipped with Vista, that thing is not worth its weight in toilet paper (good luck drawing a commutative diagram with it, for example). At the rate MS is improving it has at least 25 years to go before it catches up with TeX.
Much more than you think leaves Word & Co. (Score:5, Insightful)
People have little care or concern over what results are deemed "professional".
There are entire books and manuals that aren't made with the "proper" tools, because most people can't comprehend why Word or Publisher don't meet the criteria for "professional" results. With Publisher, it usually takes the harsh step of producing their document, from the raw material delivered by the customer.
"It looks fine on my Inkjet at home! Why does it look like so much dogshit on the floor?"
With Word, it's usually "good enough" for most people, even though the outcome isn't what you or they would really like. Give a Tech Writer a copy of Word, and they may "make-do", but I doubt you'll find many who prefer it to FrameMaker, InDesign, or even Pagemaker. That same Tech Writer will churn out a document with Word, and because it's "good enough", it will fly around the Globe, and even make it out as trade conference detritus or long-lived corporate gospel.
TeX, on the other hand, is not something most people care about learning. You *must* learn it to be able to use it confidently. There's no "good enough" with TeX - it either works, or it doesn't.
TeX is a Science. Word is a Comedy. People like comedy.
Re:Much more than you think leaves Word & Co. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are entire books and manuals that aren't made with the "proper" tools,
There aren't entire books that are PUBLISHED using Word and other, non-professional typesetting tools. You can't type up 50 pages and staple them together and say, "see, this book wasn't made in InDesign!"
And not using "proper" publishing tools only makes your manuals look amateur. All things being equal, I gladly shop with the people who took a little time to do the small things right.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That makes you a small minority, as most people shop at Wal*Mart
Well that was my comment till i read this part again:
What does that mean? IF all things are equal, then they both did the "small things right", right? I guess im being nit picky wit hords, as it just hit me that you meant "all other things being equal".
If all other thigns are equal, who wouldnt want the better product? The thing
Re:Much more than you think leaves Word & Co. (Score:4, Informative)
you said:
>There aren't entire books that are PUBLISHED using Word and other, non-professional typesetting tools
Sadly, that's not the case.
The `` for Dummies'' imprint for example is done entirely in Word using a publisher-provided stylesheet --- there are others, but I can't recall the title of the one which my previous employer did for a client.
There's even a New York phone directory (a smallish one, marketed to a specific ethnic group) which my employer prints which is formatted using Word --- I know 'cause they haven't worked out a way to do the bleed tabs, so I wrote a LaTeX file which assembles their pages and stamps them w/ the bleed tab (and if need be has options to adjust the page placement 'cause it's often inconsistent from one section to the next).
William
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I had to publish a book that actually looks good, though, neither Word nor TeX would be the right tool for the job.
TeX is neither obsolete, or Un-usable (Score:5, Informative)
and it produces __beautifully__ typeset output
and it separates document structure from content, which all
graphic visual editors do not
and you can use any text editor of your choice.
And it cost nothing but time to learn
Re:TeX is neither obsolete, or Un-usable (Score:5, Insightful)
So I've got a $BIGNUM of screws to screw in and I could use either a screwdriver or a power tool, which I don't know how to use yet.
Clearly the screwdriver is the superior option, because I have better things to do than wasting my time learning tools.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What do professional publishers use for copy when they don't use Quark or InDesign for layout? Of the handful of print shops I've consulted for, Quark, InDesign, and good ole PDF is all they take.
I've witnessed/helped the migration of lawfirms from WordPerfect to MS Word in the Southeast and Southwest over the years (about a decade ago). I've never seen a law firm use any other application for doc
They charge ridiculous fees for 'setup' (Score:3, Insightful)
I have had to convert multi-dozen page Publisher and Word documents into 'real' formats.
This pain comes at a price. See the 'Setup Fees' line item on your invoice. :)
"I know you could buy your own copy of $ProTool for that price, and for the sake of our business relationship, it's what we encourage you to do."
RIPs don't like Microsoft, no matter what kind of goofy pseudo-filter you pipe them through.
Manual (camera) seps are an alternative, and harder to find by the year.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Low (Score:5, Insightful)
Your teacher should have been fired unless they were teaching a course in LaTex.
Good news (Score:4, Funny)
I have several really good "patentapplication.sty" and "litigationpleading.sty" files.
The bad news is that I used them to patent "A method for generating really good .sty files".
The good news is that no sane court would ever find the patents valid.
The bad news is that I am posting from East Texas.
The good news is that you'll be receiving some very nicely formatted letters in the mail.
The bad news... I could keep this up all day.
The good news is I won't.
Academic does not necessarily mean Computer Scienc (Score:4, Insightful)
...I work at the Economics Research Institute at UNAM, Mexico's (and Latin America's) largest university. Researchers here are social scientists â" Their texts do include the ocassional formula, yes, but they mainly deal with straight text. Even so, I am painfully aware on how inconvenient a word-processor-minded program can be for them (i.e. try to get them to distinguish between cosmetic and semantic tagging â" No way). They literally use the computer as a fancy typewriter.
I have shown LyX to a couple of people, and are initially interested, even more looking at the quality of the results... But after I mention it cannot import (with formatting) Word documents, and that they won't be able to share their works (except as an unmodifiable PDF) with other colleagues, they go back to what they already know.
So, no, TeX is not necessarily widely used in all of academia. Just in the portion we, the computer-minded geeks, like looking at.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Low (Score:4, Informative)
Except for the fact that MS Word is more widely used than TeX
Not for professional, publication quality work.
Actually, yes.
Aside for scientific papers, TeX is nonexistent in typesetting shops and publication houses. They almost all use proprietary typesetting programs (for InDesign to specialty software).
On the other hand, Word is used by most authors (the vast majority) to turn the final draft in.
And in some small publication houses and most vanity press type publications, Word is even used to provide the final typesetting outcome (gross, I know).
(Lulu.com for example takes in Word files to produce your books).
Re:Low (Score:5, Insightful)
As a scientest, I can assure you that science departments use mostly linux. I have a few colleagues who use Mac as well.
I have a feeling that you're not a troll, just very confused
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a scientest, I can assure you that science departments use mostly linux.
What type of science department are you talking about? What is your sample size? I'm also a scientist, and I can assure you that this is not the case, especially once you get out of the computer sciences and/or physics departments. Go into one of the life or other physical science departments (biology, chemistry, environmental sciences, geology), and you will likely find Windows as far as the eye can see, with the occasional Mac thrown in for good measure. I'm in my third biology department, and I'm the
Re:Low (Score:5, Funny)
What's a scientest?
A scientest is someone who works in a scients departmint, duh.
Re:Low (Score:5, Informative)
But to back your claim, here in the physics department of the KUL in Belgium, Linux is more widespread than Windows, and more and more students are trying it out.
Re:Low (Score:4, Insightful)
I see a fairly even split between OS X and linux and desktops/laptops and pure linux on servers. What's this windows you speak of? I think they have a few of them in the library.
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The summary is a bit off, with the question about Word replacing LaTeX as the editor of choice. LaTeX is a document markup language (plus more), not a text editor. You can currently use Scientific Word as your text editor if you want, and have it write LaTeX files that can be read by Tex (typesetter).
So my question is:
By "support", does this mean Word is trying to supplant Tex as the dominant typesetter in academia? Or does this support ju
Re:Low (Score:5, Informative)
Is LaTeX 3 out yet? Lack of support for hyperlinks is annoying.
What do you mean by 'support'? The hyperref package has been available for years and gives \url and \href commands for clickable URLs and links, and automatically turns all \ref commands into clickable internal links. It also turns the table of contents into PDF metadata so you get a nice ToC in the side bar on any PDF viewer that supports bookmarks.
Re:Low (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Low (Score:5, Insightful)
LaTeX is not an editor
Word is not a document publishing system
If I want to write an academic paper to be published LaTeX is my first choice but Word would not be my second, a proper document layout and publishing system would be
If I want to write a help document, letter, or similar Word/OpenOffice would be my first choice (if on Windows)
Different tools for different problems - not a one tool for everything
Word is a very bad text editor, a quite good document editor (my opinion), and a very bad document layout system, use it for what it is good for ....
Re:Low (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right,
Word is not a text editor ...and yet a lot of people still use it that way!
Word is not a desktop publishing software
Word is not a email client
(and don't get me started on what some people use Excel for!)
Why? Because they don't want to buy/download/get the correct tool for the job. And even if the correct tool for the job is easily available, they don't want to learn how to use it!
The sad reality is that, if Word starts offering decent academic publishing features, it will overtake LaTeX in a blink... Even worse, clueless professors will start demanding that documents be submitted in .docx format!
Excel - not just for spreadsheets anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Phew - the shit I have seen crammed into a spreadsheet.. With pride.
Any higher function than SUM should require certification.
"You got a license for that Pivot Table, Son?"
Features on top of features, with no real signposts to guide their implementation. Gag.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And even if the correct tool for the job is easily available, they don't want to learn how to use it!
I don't have a lot of experience with (La)TeX, but from what I can tell, using it still involves dealing with manual markup and/or using an IDE-style interface.
That may be what professional typesetters want (although I doubt they want it as their only option), but it's definitely not what most people who aren't professional typesetters want to use.
If I'm trying to put together documentation quickly, I care a
Re:Low (Score:5, Insightful)
What you don't seem to understand is that LaTeX is FASTER to write up than any other system.
Your inability to distinguish between "easy to use" and "easy to learn" marks you as a fool.
Re:Low (Score:5, Insightful)
Here goes all the moderating I did on this thread, but I want to get one thing clear before it confuses anyone else.
I have never used LaTeX, but I understand it and know why it's important, I hope that I can help you and anyone else who might be interested.
TeX allows the content creators to create the content without knowledge of the finished formatting. If your a writer, you just write with everything left justified in a clean screen font without regard to how your creation will appear on the printed page. Sure, you might need to know a handful of basic formatting tags; a few written on an index card is enough unless your doing equations or some other complex work.
Ultimately, the content creator is freed from concerning themselves with anything but content. This alone is a huge productivity booster!
I think the worst thing LaTeX has going for it is that the examples provided on webpages try to show the power and not the ease of use. Below is some typical markup in LaTeX for normal text, certainly not overwhelming (from here [uiuc.edu])
\documentstyle[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}
This is a sample document. I can just keep typing without regard to formatting, unless of course I want to ensure that something {\em important} is emphasized.
\begin{myspecialtag}
I can, as the content creator, specify blocks of text, like this one, that will later have special formatting applied. I don't worry about what that formatting will be, I just create a new label on the fly, or reuse ones I have already used or were provided by my template developer.
\end{myspecialtag}
The fact that I am free to just type, and only tag blocks of text for later formatting frees me from thought about what the final document will look like and keeps me focused on the content that I am creating.
\end{document}
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
... or like playing tetris in emacs?
Did I go too far?
Re:Low (Score:4, Informative)
Is LaTeX 3 out yet? Lack of support for hyperlinks is annoying.
Waiting for LaTeX 3 is certainly optimistic. I think they are still working out the syntax of the language...
But hyperlinks are working, and working well, for quite a while now.
I'll bid this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say the odds of MS Word replacing LaTeX are about the same as Microsoft releasing the source to Word so we can fix problems and add features as we need them.
A lot of these open source projects grew out of a direct need. There was a vacuum to be filled. The need shaped what the product wound up being. Trying to pound the square peg of MS Word into the round hole LaTeX fills is most likely impossible.
Support or not, they're just too different.
Re:I'll bid this (Score:5, Funny)
Trying to pound the square peg of MS Word into the round hole LaTeX fills is most likely impossible.
Did this sound naughty to anyone else?
Re:I'll bid this (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say the odds of MS Word replacing LaTeX are about the same as Microsoft releasing the source to Word so we can fix problems and add features as we need them.
I'm not sure how it is in other industries, but many IEEE conferences and journals accept LaTeX, pdf, or a doc file (they provide a template).
As a result, nobody in my school department ever tried to figure out how to use LaTeX (well, I did, but that's because I'm already a geek who has no problem with the learning curve and would rather just have a better tool). I'm not saying this is the norm even in other EE departments, and I know LaTeX is by far the default in academia. However, I'm pointing out that the switch has begun before microsoft even bothered offering those features.
Re:I'll bid this (Score:5, Funny)
That only means you aren't using a big enough sledgehammer. Trust me, with enough force any peg can get into any hole.
The state of the hole afterwords is a problem for the end user.
Re:Low (Score:5, Insightful)
Something usually free is already widely used.
remember that Linux came along as a free alternative to challenge the established OS, with mixed success. now, we have a non-free alternative coming along to challenge Latex (e.g. TexShop). Somehow it seems the odds of success are marginal.
Here's what Tex/Latex have going for them, as viewed by a grad student currently writing his thesis, like myself:
* Knuth designed Tex to be more than just words on paper, he designed formulas to help make your documents beautiful. I think he's getting it right, which is why his version numbers are converging to pi.
* Part of the reason is that Latex is not just about formulas. It's also about styles, lists, bibliography, cross referencing within your doc, etc, which WYSIWYG has not been able to get right so far, and for the needs of power-users, I suspect it never will. I use both, and I still struggle to get Word lists to do what I want.
* User experience. Now that I've spent time on the Tex learning curve, and I can typically get it to do what I want, why would I want to get on another learning curve?
* Free. With software like TexShop, I already have all I want, in a great package.
Re:Low (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the reason is that Latex is not just about formulas. It's also about styles, lists, bibliography, cross referencing within your doc, etc, which WYSIWYG has not been able to get right so far, and for the needs of power-users, I suspect it never will. I use both, and I still struggle to get Word lists to do what I want
Yes, but remember that Microsoft has gained dominance in many areas just by providing "good enough" software with the MS name.
Lots of people considered Lotus 123 superior to MS Excel. Lots of people considered WordPerfect superior to MS Word... What happened to those markets?
Now that I've spent time on the Tex learning curve, and I can typically get it to do what I want, why would I want to get on another learning curve?
Now, think of the guy who just gets into college in 2011 and has the option of learning LaTeX or continue using MS Word, which he has already used for years to do High School papers and other stuff...
Will he want to get on another (much steeper!) learning curve, or will he just figure out the "advanced typesetting" menus of Word 2010?
If it works... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Word 2010 does this extremely well, perhaps they deserve to become the editor of choice.
How well does OpenOffice.org do this?
Re:If it works... (Score:5, Insightful)
does OpenOffice.org do this?
Ask this question first. :)
Tex works ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't use either for book size projects, that's what TeX [miktex.org] is for.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How well does OpenOffice.org do this?
OpenOffice doesn't do TeX-style markup, since the sole reason for OpenOffice existing is to feel familiar for users of Microsoft Office (pre 2007), and since Word doesn't do it (yet) then neither can OOo.
If you don't care about Microsoft Office then you're free to use anything. I use LyX ( http://www.lyx.org/ [lyx.org] ), a GUI word processor which outputs to TeX, when I'm doing large projects or anything scientific. I use Abiword ( http://www.abisource.com/ [abisource.com] ) for creating quick throwaway documents, and I use leafpad
Biology (Score:5, Interesting)
In biology, Word is already the document editor of choice. And Excel is the charting software of choice. It's really quite a pain.
Earth Science too (partly) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Biology (Score:5, Informative)
Out of sheer ignorance Excel is used for statistics. The statistics community has published about the many errors in that spreadsheet but people outside math culture just assume if it's from Microsoft, hey, it must be ok (I'm actually quite baffled by that attitude - don't they know they have to use anti-virus software? Don't they know their Windows is buggy? )
Numerics never was Microsoft's expertise and you better look elsewhere. If I were an advisor or examining your theses, I'd run your data through professional software (yes, I'm saying Excel isn't "professional statistics software").
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1) people who use excel for statistics don't know anything about statistics, so it doesn't matter - someone (the boss, the journal editor, your colleague) wanted something (error bars, ..) so you put them in. It rarely affects how people actually think (much less, are the underlying numbers suitable for a statistical treatment)
2) at least in molecular biology (biochmemistry, immunology, nucleic acids, etc) excel is the great can opener - (a) I have maybe 10 different instruments in the lab that spit out ele
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Postscript is a turing equivalent programming language too. I wouldn't recommend anyone do statistics with their printer either.
Re:Biology (Score:5, Informative)
(I've posted this before, but still)
Yes, it is a pain [nih.gov].
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Luckally, I haven't done anything (yet!) worth being submitted to Nature.
You know, that's one sentence I didn't think I'd *EVER* hear.
less than low (Score:5, Insightful)
The guys who need this stuff are already geeky, and why would geeky guys use something "for pay" that comes out of a budget? And since this will be in a proprietary format, why would they risk these documents becoming unreadable?
faulty logic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the folks using TeX are also owners of Mathematica, IDL and other software that costs thousands of dollars per license -- because it increases their productivity.
It's not an issue of cost, it's an issue of the benefit for the cost -- and I don't think there will be the benefit unless MS Word decouples the content from the presentation. (which allows the TeX users to write their paper once, and then have it formatted correctly for whatever journal it'll be published in) As for becoming unreadable -- so long as you can export it to PDF, Post Script, or whatever, you're fine for archiving.
And would MS Word replace InDesign? I don't think so, but if they've got this support in MS Word, I can only assume they'll bring it over to MS Publisher, and they might be able to pick up some users.
Re:less than low (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the guys who need this stuff TODAY already know how to use TeX.
The kid who will be entering college in 2011 will probably not want to learn TeX if Word can produce acceptable results
I'd say.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Apples to Oranges (Score:5, Informative)
Between this, the new equation editor and styles, what are the chances of Word replacing LaTeX as the editor of choice in academia?
Word and TeX are two very useful tools for two very different needs. Word has a long way to go before it is as complete, open and diverse as TeX and TeX has a long way to go before it is as easy to use and as pervasive as Word.
.doc vs .docx means but until they get their shit together and I can read my saved file like an validated XML document, I'm not going to be putting anything important in any sort of Office format. If I'm going to be writing a paper or book, it ain't gonna be typeset in MS Word while those memories are fresh.
This sure is great news for Office 2010 (and for me at my job which forces me to use Office) but I think you're a little premature in thinking either of them are stepping on each other's toes or even close to conflict.
I don't know anyone who was holding onto TeX based purely on its support for Advanced Typographic features of OpenType.
Call me a grudge holding idiot but Office would have to undo years upon years of me suffering from "<MS Product> has encountered a problem and had to close, your shit is in a temporary file though and we'll try to recover your information or pieces of your information but this never works. Also, the last thing I did before I closed was mutilate the master copy." Now I may be exaggerating but it has helped that nothing else could ever open those files either. I don't know what
Re:Apples to Oranges (Score:5, Informative)
For easy-to-use, LyX is the best front-end for LaTeX:
http://www.lyx.org/ [lyx.org]
IMO it's one of the most innovative of software projects, commercial or otherwise.
William
Re:Apples to Oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
As a user of LyX, I generally agree. However, it still is in need of improvement in a variety of areas. In particular, if you have to prepare a document that needs to be formatted in a very specific way, you better hope for one of the following:
1) the format is simple, so not much work involved in setting it up.
2) one of the default templates/options gives you what you need (optionally append #1 here for variations if needed)
3) you've been provided a template (I wish...but very unlikely).
4) you are a wizard at TeX/LaTeX/LyX, and/or you can become one (RTFM, Google, etc.).
Option #4 is available to everyone with the learning capacity, inclination, and time to spend on it. Personally, I'm lacking somewhat in at least the latter two categories (and perhaps the former as well, as I've found setting up/configuring documents in LyX to be ridiculously frustrating). I've started using LaTeX recently, but only because I could only find a template for what I needed in only that format, and unfortunately importing/exporting LaTeX is not an option (it tends to get things pretty messed up).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know anyone who was holding onto TeX based purely on its support for Advanced Typographic features of OpenType.
At the risk of stating the obvious, that's probably because TeX doesn't have any advanced support for OpenType. This has been a major thorn in its side for years, because while its typography was always better than Windows 3.1 TrueType, modern professional grade fonts are pretty much all distributed as OpenType now, and the visual quality you can get with the likes of Adobe InDesign using them is substantially better than you can get from TeX unless you really have a thing for Computer Modern.
This has start
Not for me (Score:5, Insightful)
I use LaTeX not only for its nice typographic properties, but because of how flexible it is. It's trivial to generate LaTeX code for automatically generating documentation, for instance. LaTeX may still be ahead in a couple areas (e.g., citations. Does Word beat out BibTeX yet?), but I'm not sure. As long as Word is GUI-based, I can't see it ever being anywhere near as flexible as LaTeX is.
This is still very cool though. I hate seeing flyers and menus and then that scream from 20 feet away "I WAS MADE IN WORD! MY TYPOGRAPHY WILL BURN YOUR EYES!" Anything that improves the quality of print around me is a good thing, I say.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://oestrem.com/thingstwice/2007/05/latex-vs-word-vs-writer/ [oestrem.com]
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Word supports a bunch of bibliography managers like EndNote. The combination beats out TeX.
Sorry, but I strongly disagree. EndNote has the advantage of being good as a bibliography manager. But unless it has improved a lot in the last three or four years since I last used it, it really feels clunky when compared to some BibTeX bibliography managers such as BibDesk (which by the way is free). I wouldn't change BibDesk for EndNote even if I got paid to do it!
Now, regarding the actual generation of the formatted bibliography, BibTeX works smoothly and very reliably with LaTeX. The same cannot (could
When it replaces notepad (Score:5, Insightful)
The big question is can it write it effectively. Word already has the tendency of turning a basic document into a code of spaghetti when saved as HTML. Somehow I don't see this being any different
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Word already has the tendency of turning a basic document into a code of spaghetti when saved as HTML.
Word actually does a pretty decent job at HTML, but not by default. The format to save a document in is "HTML (filtered)", not regular HTML. When Word uses non-filtered HTML it introduces a requirement that the file should look the same if you re-open it in Word, so it includes a metric ton of meta-data and Office-only crap in the markup so that if you open the HTML document again in Word, it looks exactly the same as when you saved it. If you choose to filter all that crap out, it might not look as pret
Microsoft OpenType (Score:3, Insightful)
About zero, but when will MS come after TeX for patent royalties on Microsoft OpenType ?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Never, they would destroyed in a prior art claim. They sue other people who don't know about TeX.
Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
There is not a question about Word taking over from LaTeX in academia since Word already dominates academia.
In most disciplines in academia (all of the humanities and social sciences for example) no one has heard of TeX or LaTeX, and people mostly don't have the technical skills to use either program easily. And they are _already_ all using Word.
By contrast, in mathematics and other disciplines where LaTeX is a good solution, it is very hard to imagine something as clunky, bug prone, bloated and hard to use as Word taking over from something robust and easy to use (if you think the way mathematicians think) like LaTeX.
Re:Wrong question (Score:5, Interesting)
There is not a question about Word taking over from LaTeX in academia since Word already dominates academia.
Dominates is perhaps too strong a term. I've helped several friends to get Masters/PhD theses written up using LaTeX, after they gave up on Word out of frustration. The screwed-up cross-references and so on have bitten more than one of my other friends firmly in the backside. My usual example, unfortunate as it was, was that one friend submitted her thesis written using Word, only to discover that every single cross-reference was off by a page, and nearly had it sent back as a result.
Those friends were all studying humanities, languages and other arts subjects rather than maths or CompSci, BTW, and none of them had any difficulty using LaTeX once they'd been shown the basics for half an hour.
Can I use my LaTex packages? (Score:5, Funny)
And does it run on *nix?
No? Then it's still useless to me.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenType and Mac OS X (Score:3, Informative)
Ho hum. Microsoft finally implemented a feature 5 years behind everyone else.
Most applications in Mac OS X get full OpenType support through the operating system. This includes Pages, Apple's very capable in-house word processor.
I'm not saying you should migrate from TeX (I use XeTeX for a lot of more complex typesetting operations), but you by no means need to look to Microsoft Word to get OpenType support. I switch between Pages for ease of use and TeX for freedom and typographic perfection.
Missing the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In which case TeX is again the preferred tool to use, since the publisher can simply provide a class file with some basic instruction on how to use it, and the authors/editors can come up with a well formatted camera ready document simply by following the (usually one page of) instructions.
TeX vs. Office (Score:5, Insightful)
Office will take over from TeX when (at the least)
* It works on Linux (which lots of academics use.
* It works well with version control, making it easy to merge edits made by different people
* It is easy to generate tables from scripts and glue them into the document
* It is easy to take a pre-written document and put it in a new style.
Now, it's possible Office already does a few of those, and it's also very possible TeX does an awful lot more than that.
The cost isn't really that much of an issue for academics, as every university tends to have a site-licence for Office and other apps. Despite this, I still never use it.
Re:TeX vs. Office (Score:5, Informative)
Word does have version control.
It is possible to change styles if you set it up properly when you are typing the document. Most people don't. It isn't the easiest thing to do, though apparently it is better in 2007 than 2003 which I use.
Re: (Score:3)
It does, it just uses MOSS to do it; Word being the front-end. Same as Excel, PowerPoint, etc, etc. You can rollback versions; compare any two versions; pretty much everything you'd expect from a version-control system.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
normal human beings
Academics aren't normal human beings. ;)
LaTeX the editor of choice?! (Score:5, Informative)
I always find it funny that people talk about LaTeX being the system of choice in academia. While this may be true in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics circles, it certainly isn't true in a whole range of other disciplines such as Biology and the Social Sciences. The claim that LaTeX is what all of academia is using just isn't true.
Oh, and LaTeX is not an editor.
Re:LaTeX the editor of choice?! (Score:5, Funny)
To the hardcore CS, math, and physics folks, those other areas are not academia. They're pop culture.
Problems with Word (Score:4, Interesting)
- paragraph hyphenation is brain-dead one-line at a time
- one must invoke commands to generate the ToC and Index and remember to re-invoke them if pagination changes
- documents are non-portable / formatting is dependent on currently installed printer
- graphics can be embedded and can be nightmarish to get out in a press-ready form
- citations require third-party extensions which can interfere w/ importing / processing documents (hit Command shift F9 to convert all selected form fields to text)
- There is no easy way to assign paragraph styles --- one has to build a custom toolbar to have them all available w/ a click, the arrangement of said toolbar is dependent on the _length_ of the stylenames --- why the outline view can't have some sort of pop-up menu or ability to assign more than Heading 1--n and Normal is beyond me
- local formatting is insidious --- create an InDesign document, assign styles to everything, formatting everything w/ styles, take it into Word, then bring it back into InDesign and one will still have to clear over-rides to keep the text from being formatted as Times New Roman
and all of that doesn't consider stupid / ignorant users and the visually formatted, but not structured documents which they always create. Best indictment of that here:
Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient by Allin Cottrell
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html [wfu.edu]
If typography were easy, Word wouldn't be the foetid mess which it is.
One will also never use Word as the basis for back-end typesetting systems --- I've done them for customized children's stories and telephone directory line ads --- a co-worker (Jeff McArthur) at my previous workplace developed one which would do customized versions of the CIA World Factbook as a demo --- the original version did the typesetting for a 2,200 page register and the technology was customized and sold to several customers.
Also, to be fair and accurate, Quark XPress and several other DTP programs handle OpenType features in addition to InDesign and XeTeX/XeLaTeX http://www.tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex [tug.org] and the nascent luatex, http://www.luatex.org/ [luatex.org] (as well as ant http://ant.berlios.de/ [berlios.de]).
William
(who wrote a several thousand line WordBASIC macro to handle the formatting for a review journal for a major sci-med publisher so that the text could be pulled into Quark XPress 6, then 7, then finally InDesign CS3 --- I also wrote a xelatex package for typesetting the journal, but that was nixed by my boss 'cause if the journal had been done in TeX it would've been outsourced to India)
Depends on the discipline (Score:3, Insightful)
In mathematics, and most branches of physics, LaTeX is much more popular than Word, and with very good reason. I have no idea of what the proposed changes are for Word 2010, but I somehow doubt that the current painful way of using the equation editor is likely to be very attractive to these practitioners. LaTeX's superior fontwork also is a major advantage that Word currently cannot match.
The third issue is platform independence. Though versions of Word exist for Mac, Pages has come along very rapidly in the last 2-3 years, and will likely fragment the Mac market. Mac and Linux are both gaining market share (usually at the expense of Windows, and especially in academic settings), so unless Word addresses problems with the WYSIWYG method of entering equations (maybe steal some ideas from TeXMacs), and makes a concerted push on these two platforms (its non-existent on Linux), I do not see how it can make a dent in the traditional strongholds of LaTeX.
Most journals do not accept MS 2007 submissions (even the Word friendly publishing houses), let alone MS 2010.
the chances are nil. (Score:3, Insightful)
As I'm typing this reply, I'm taking a break from typesetting the math paper with LaTeX. So, a couple of things come to mind, immediately. First, LaTeX is 'what you mean is what you get', not 'what you see is what you get'. In LaTeX I actually *say* what I want, rather than using the GUI. Does it matter? Yes. If I need to choose some spacing (rather than letting it to default), I can make my choice precisely, and say it so (e.g., 1pt, meaning 1 point). And in general, the strongest feature of (La)TeX: you have a complete control on the layout. You can setup the formulas any way you want. Period. Next, consider the following example. You need to use greek letters. In GUI (such as MS products), you have to pull down menu, find the option greek letters, select the one you need. In LaTeX I simply type \alpha, or \beta, or whatever. And the choices of fonts I got! Mmmm So once I've tried LaTeX I simply coudln't get back to GUI-based tools. Well, I can go on and on. And the last by not least: many free integrated editors/compilers for LaTeX. My favorite is Emacs/Auctex.
Now I'm talking about mathematicians, not 'academia' in general. If you are into some staff like philosophy or history, you'll be just fine with MS.
TeX isn't used... (Score:4, Informative)
due to its ability to render funky typography. Its used because it separates the function of 'writing' from the function of 'typesetting'.
If you want to see a better explanation, see http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html [wfu.edu]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Would it be that hard for a WYSIWYG editor to implement a usable plain-text based editor to act as a fail-safe for users who actually know what's going on?
More than a decade ago I used to run Dreamweaver to create webpages, but most of my edits were done in the "html view". I could see Microsoft targeting a future where documents have a separate view which lets you see all the formatting mumbo-jumbo. Non-WYSIWYG isn't too hard to envision for a traditional Word Processor...
Re:As soon as Word is non WYSIWYG (Score:4, Informative)
Would it be that hard for a WYSIWYG editor to implement a usable plain-text based editor to act as a fail-safe for users who actually know what's going on?
Kids these days... What you are describing is WordPerfect's Reveal Codes [wikipedia.org] functionality. My 10th grade word processing class used WP, on Winderz 3.0. Even before that, I vaguely recall some C=64 editing software that had something like this functionality.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
LyX isn't too bad as a middle-ground between text-based and WYSIWYG.
I still prefer VIM though.
Re:As soon as Word is non WYSIWYG (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that (Score:5, Informative)
but one of the real glories of TeX is the ability to separate content from presentation. A closer example would be if HTML + CSS could handle all these things.
With LaTeX I can take articles written in basic LaTeX and style them to a specific theme or format for a book or journal. Word strikes me as much harder to do this with. It might be possible to do this with Word but there seems to be too much temptation to paint a document.
Re:Not only that (Score:5, Informative)
This is kind of funny, because I often explain Word to techies as being much more like HTML/CSS than it appears at first. Every paragraph is like a >p< tag. A style is like a CSS style. It actually makes a lot more sense when you think about it this way.
It also doesn't hurt that Office 2007 makes dealing with styles a lot easier than it used to be, and offers a lot of different automatic themes that look pretty good. So long as you use the standard styles (Heading 1, 2, 3, etc.), you can immediately re-theme a document without much effort. It's really pretty cool.
Re:Not only that (Score:4, Funny)
Aaaand I screw up the <p> tag. Go me!
Re:Not only that (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. The difference being that Word doesn't always truly separate content from presentation, nor does it enforce any separation of content from presentation.
IOW, TeX is like making a webpage using HTML 4 strict with a text editor, and Word is like making a webpage in Microsoft FrontPage.
Re:Never... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people use Windows in academia, of course. The Unix die-hards will stick to their guns, but most will think it's great that Office 2010 can handle Math (BTW, the article never mentioned TeX).
Probably, this will introduce yet another rift in the culture, with some people demanding a document be made with Word. It'll be incompatible with everything else, as usual, creating yet another headache for those that avoid Microsoft (I do - I don't think they make good products - I prefer Mac, Linux and BSD).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, in more Slashdot terms:
is a lot easier to use
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Re:!editor (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it means exactly what he think it means. I think that what you mean is it is much harder to learn.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well no, you use Styles. Section titles get the section title style, body text gets the body text style, and so on. Change the style definition and magically all the relevant text changes too.
Now when I say "Styles", that's what they're called in OpenOffice. I think Word has an equivalent, but they might call it something else. Any way up, you don't have to manually style your section headers as 24pt bold comic sans everytime in Word or OpenOffice.
Re:Ligatures? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ligatures are mostly decorative these days --- the original reason for them was to handle kerns which intruded into other characters, hence the existence of fi and fl --- also Gutenberg used optional / alternate ligatures to facilitate evening out the spacing of his lines, but that fell by the wayside, and has yet to be reasonably automated (though that was one of the intents of the HZ algorithm which URW developed and Aldus licensed to use in what became Adobe InDesign).
I make extensive use of Zapfino's ligatures in a small ``Peace on Earth'' card which the TeX User's Group mailed out one year:
http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/peace_on_earth.pdf [tug.org]
More discussion of them in:
http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/onetype.pdf [tug.org]
which is a companion piece to the broadside:
http://mysite.verizon.net/william_franklin_adams/portfolio/typography/typefaceterminology.pdf [verizon.net]
William
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, I constantly find myself wishing Office 2k7 had some form of command-line with tab-completion and -suggestion so I could find the commands they hid in random ribbon pages as either a large, small, or worded entry, in a popup screen somewhere, or just outright hid (ugh.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In my experience, in Word you layout your document exactly how you want it to be viewed, make some minor change, again layout your document, make another change which again screws up your layout, and repeat throughout the editing process. What a waste of time.
I hate Word, and use it rarely. Those that like it can have it.