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People who predict the death of Office/Word have clearly never written anything longer than a newspaper article. Try writing a 500 page document, complete with
by dmd 17y ago
People who predict the death of Office/Word have clearly never written anything longer than a newspaper article.
Try writing a 500 page document, complete with TOCs, indices, tables, lists, footnotes, endnotes, references, etc. in something like Google Docs sometime.
- vault_ 17y agoIn my experience, using Word for that hasn't been a whole lot more pleasant.
- cubicle67 17y agoIt's not exactly a picnic in Word either Handling very large text files is something the old unix tools did well (I can load a 500Mb log file (don't ask :/) in vi no problems), but most modern applications still struggle
- carterschonwald 17y agoTry writing a 50 page document with those same references, but also countless images or diagrams (and perhaps even some care taken with typesetting!). It has certainly been the case even in the past year or two that the happless art history major with a senior thesis project due soon, but whose machine doesn't have the resources to handle the document or have to deal with unexpected changes in formatting because they switched which printer they'll be printing to! obvious they should be using latex over word :p, but the point is that theres a tradeoff on where the abstractions are and who has to deal with them. Seriously though, anyone on HN who regularly writes large documents and cares about their formatting etc being nice, should have a go at latex! :)
- rbanffy 17y agoWhy? Why, in this day and, would anyone want a 500 page printed document? Something that would need updating as soon as it's printed? The only reason I use 500+ page things is to read them from my couch, something the iPad (and the Kindle, the Sony and the Nook) can do very, very well. In fact, I carry about 100 books in electronic form with me on my iPod (which could be described as an "iPad Nano") And any reader can do even better if it's not a monolithic 500+ page monster, but a neatly organized and searchable website.
- roel_v 17y agoResearch proposals and research project results need to be delivered in paper format. They are also written by multiple contributors (sometimes up to 100) and can use only technology that 1) everybody has and 2) everyone can use without learning something new. Taking personal experience and extrapolate into 'this is all anyone ever needs' hardly ever ends well.
- rbrcurtis 17y agoMy wife is a grad student. Every time she writes a paper, no matter how long, she prints it out and then marks it up with a red pen to go over changes she thinks it needs. I always think this is extremely backwards and she should just edit it directly in word, but it is what works for her. She will surely do the exact same thing with the book she is working on as well.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]