[mdlug] [OT] Perspective

[M. D. Krauss]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 03:45:49 -0400 (EDT)
Michael Corral <micorral at comcast.net> wrote:

> 2007-07-21, Monsieur M. D. Krauss a ecrit:

/snip

> > I'm not sure I agree here.  I don't know how to use groff and/or
> > LaTeX and I am not new to Linux at all - it's just never been
> > something I needed - but I tend to think that typesetting (and
> > indeed any visual design task) is one area where GUI and WYSIWYG
> > (or WYSIWYM a la Lyx - say that three times fast with marbles in
> > your mouth) have become too valuable.
> 
> I used to be a big WordPerfect fan. But now I just don't like using
> the WYSIWYG word processors anymore, they are too restrictive and
> they often don't do what you try to get them to do. Word is the worst
> at that, it always infuriates me when it thinks it knows what I want
> to do, despite me telling it to do something else. I now only use
> things like Word when I have to put something in that format. I use
> groff for most documents, and LaTeX for a few things groff can't do,
> all put into PDF format.

Well, of course, Word is awful.  There are just a ton of issues that
make anything beyond the most basic formatting a total headache.  OOo
Writer is Somewhat better.  Abiword is much cleaner.  At the end of the
day, though, I've never seen an office suite that actually impresses me.



> 
> I totally disagree that the WYSIWYG apps are better or even easier.
> Getting correct formatting can be a nightmare in those programs.
> Things like groff and LaTeX handle all that for you, I think they
> are definitely worth learning. For example, save the following text
> between the dashed lines in a file called letter.tex, then run
> this command: pdflatex letter.tex

/snipped example

> I honestly don't think that is too hard.

No it is not.  If that is the document you wanted.

I will certainly not argue that LaTeX isn't better for some purposes.
However, out there in the real world, some people have to deal with
ever-changing format requirements, bosses and co-workers looking over
their shoulders and nit-picking details in real-time, and producing
documents that are more like a flier or spec-sheet than a standardized
letter, article, or book, and my impression is that this is where LaTeX
and relatives fall short.

I guess it depends on if you are looking at your task as creating
textual content, and would like the formatting to be handled
for you in a nice way; or looking at it as creating visual content, and
would like to have more control over the composition.  For most people,
I suppose, it is a little of each.

/snipped links to educational resources

> > A program that doesn't get the attention it deserves is LyX.
> 
> I tried using LyX, but the interface was confusing to me, so I stayed
> with editing LaTeX in plain old Emacs, which has a good LaTeX mode.

From what I've seen of it, LyX has a very cool interface.  Takes some
getting used to, though. 

> 
> > But the
> > practical reality is that most people have neither the time nor the
> > inclination to learn more then one such system, and nothing that
> > cannot interchange documents with Word can be that one - sadly.
> 
> I think that's changing. PDF is becoming more widely used, and the new
> ODF may become popular. I don't think the Word .doc format has as big
> a stranglehold as it used to, and I see its grip weakening even more.

PDF is irrelevant - you can't pass documents around and edit them with
PDF effectively.  ODF is showing signs of breaking the .doc
stranglehold, and I hope it does - but so what? A program still has to
be able to interchange documents well with Word, even if Word has been
forced to support ODF.  It is a fundamentally different document
model, no?

Regards,
Matthew