5 ms·
The claim that the Word layout engine is as good as TeX's is not correct. Even for math-free text, TeX does a better job of hyphenating and line-breaking. The
by mturmon 16y ago
The claim that the Word layout engine is as good as TeX's is not correct.
Even for math-free text, TeX does a better job of hyphenating and line-breaking. The TeX algorithm specifically tries have low variability in line-to-line fill density. Word does not care, which can result in a loose line between two tight lines, causing horizontal stripes in a block of text.
For much more, including ligatures, kerning, and transparency, see:
http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex
My point above is his point #7.
- flowereater 16y agoLigatures, kerning, hyphenation, etc. can be enabled in Word: http://jeffhuang.com/better_word_papers.html http://jeffhuang.com/better_word_papers.html It's just not on by default which is a shame.
- icarus_drowning 16y agoHas anyone done a comparison on how well the kerning/hyphenation/etc. compare to TeX's? As I understand it, even some commercial packages that are designed for this sort of thing still fail to match TeX's. I could be wrong there, however.
- Splines 16y agoAlso, the component that powers Word's text layout also does it for IE7/IE8/IE9, WPF and Silverlight (and maybe more, I don't know). I've heard that Word doesn't play as well with the text layout component as the component authors would prefer. It's possible that this will improve in the future. As for TeX vs Word, that's a great question. I know that the authors of Word's text layout engine are familiar with Knuth's dead-tree works on typography, but beyond that, I don't know.
- flowereater 16y agoIt would be great if someone out there did a blind test of Word vs LaTeX layout. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult -- just get a few pages of text from Gutenberg and render it in both Word and LaTeX.