Re: I hate Word

From: Tim Shoppa (shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com)
Date: 06/18/04 

Date: 18 Jun 2004 04:45:52 -0700

John Larkin <jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote in message news:<bg31d09von3jrvg3n3918evc3kh84j13g6@4ax.com>...
> Microsoft Word is an annoying mess, so I mostly don't use it. I create
> most everything using Edit, in plain text; this is compatible with
> pre/post processors, assemblers, compilers, PCB netlists, parts lists,
> all sorts of useful stuff. Variable pitch fonts *don't* work for this
> sort of thing.
> ...
> Did I mention that I hate Word?

Word has its difficulties because it has an impedance mismatch with
both those who edit in terms of ideas and those who edit in terms
of page layout and typography. It lives in between the two worlds in that
it lets you specify both and you just trust that billg did the right thing
when it comes to making the two viewpoints meet. I'll give some credit that
it works most of the time... at least as long as you don't upgrade Word, or
send a file to a customer with a different version of Word, where the
impedance mismatch is solved differently. If you're sending invoices in
Word and billg shifts everything over one column... chaos ensues.

For highly technical documents, TeX/LaTeX is still the preferred
source format, and the skills I learned in doing it 15 years ago are still
relevant today. Nothing beats the ease with which vector drawings are
included. Embedding bitmaps in your document is for losers. Equation
formatting is supreme.

I'm surprised Don Lancaster hasn't stepped in and told you to write
all of your documents in PostScript. PDF is just a small step from that.
To get the real advantage of postscript/PDF you *cannot* start with MS Word...
it's worse than making HTML with Word. Others here have mentioned page
layout tools that are much more appropriate.

Tim.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How to Convert a Postscript Document to a Word Document
    ... Convert it to PDF, and attempt to edit the pages of the PDF using things like Illustrator, or Acrobat. ... The reason your idea won't work is that a Postscript document is a program that when run produces as a side-effect a number of pages with marks on them. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: How to Convert a Postscript Document to a Word Document
    ... Convert it to PDF, and attempt to edit the pages of the PDF using things like Illustrator, or Acrobat. ... The reason your idea won't work is that a Postscript document is a program that when run produces as a side-effect a number of pages with marks on them. ... If you've got significant changes to make then you will probably have to recreate the document. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: How to Convert a Postscript Document to a Word Document
    ... Convert it to PDF, and attempt to edit the pages of the PDF using things like Illustrator, or Acrobat. ... The reason your idea won't work is that a Postscript document is a program that when run produces as a side-effect a number of pages with marks on them. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: Acrobat Reader 6 for Linux
    ... On 20 Nov 2003 16:44:28 GMT, David McKee wrote: ... > convert to postscript and save to a file. ... Edit the xpdfrc configuration file: ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
Quantcast