Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on October 19, 2004 07:51 AM
Although not really searching for an alternative, there are a few features which invariably bring me back to LaTeX:
Predictability It always works as deisgned. Can't say that about a lot of software.
No bugs Seems an outragous claim, but is true. You probably won't run out of fingers when counting off software in this category.
Styles Once the design is finished, it never needs to be touched again, and all the rest is real work. Consistency is trivial. The design can even be done by someone else, and be changed with essentially 0 effort for any number of documents.
Scalability Any size document is fine. If the processing is too slow for you, just get a faster CPU. A PIII-450 (5y old!) is just fine for a 300 page thesis (and more).
Safety Document corruption has never been heard of. Revision control system: trivial.
Timelessness 10 year old documents are no trouble. Tell me any other software achieving this (don't even bother looking in Redmond).
Given these points, I say bugger the GUI. There's no real alternative.
As for other software, anyone insane enough to write a thesis in word deserves all. I'd never use FM for a thesis either, unless I own a personal copy which I can use anytime to access my personal documents. This will never happen as there isn't a FM for my OS (quite apart from the price).
I hear people gripe all the time about how much time they waste on working around bugs in FM. This tells you something clearly: your tool is crap. And Adobe and Microsoft have one thing in common: the sky will come down before they lift a finger to fix any bug you tell them about.
If you want GUI, your best bet is OOo. Keep in mind that writers are useles programmers, and programmers are useless writers (talking about professional level here, and generalising). Therefore, if you are a professional writer and would like to persuade the programmers at OOo to give up their spare time to make a tool suiting your professional needs, keep on telling OOo with well-reasoned understandable-by-programmers arguments why feature X is essential to you. And while you're getting an OS-independent(!) tool for a hard-to-beat price, offer to work on the OOo documentation...
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Re:author missed the best feature!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on October 19, 2004 07:51 AMGiven these points, I say bugger the GUI. There's no real alternative.
As for other software, anyone insane enough to write a thesis in word deserves all. I'd never use FM for a thesis either, unless I own a personal copy which I can use anytime to access my personal documents. This will never happen as there isn't a FM for my OS (quite apart from the price).
I hear people gripe all the time about how much time they waste on working around bugs in FM. This tells you something clearly: your tool is crap. And Adobe and Microsoft have one thing in common: the sky will come down before they lift a finger to fix any bug you tell them about.
If you want GUI, your best bet is OOo. Keep in mind that writers are useles programmers, and programmers are useless writers (talking about professional level here, and generalising). Therefore, if you are a professional writer and would like to persuade the programmers at OOo to give up their spare time to make a tool suiting your professional needs, keep on telling OOo with well-reasoned understandable-by-programmers arguments why feature X is essential to you. And while you're getting an OS-independent(!) tool for a hard-to-beat price, offer to work on the OOo documentation...
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