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The article is very, very misinformed. Word processors are good for text..?! Pure text markup formats are bad? Oh, really-really? I suspect the author never re

The article is very, very misinformed. Word processors are good for text..?! Pure text markup formats are bad? Oh, really-really? I suspect the author never really wrote anything reasonably complicated. How about: 1) can't have proper a version control with those binary documents word processors generate. 2) no easy way to split huge papers/thesis/book into manageble pieces 3) conversion between formats is a nightmare, with formatting falling apart all the time. 4) typing formulas in Word (and Libre/OpenOffice) is a torture. 5) diffs 6) ... that's just off the top of my head.

vkazanov 8y ago
From other comments: 7) collaboration is almost impossible
mnw21cam 8y ago
I have to say your points 1 and 5 (which in my opinion are the same thing) is the killer reason why I write stuff in LaTeX (apart from the fact that I hate Microsoft Word with a loathing and find LibreOffice even worse). The other thing is that a LaTeX document is text - I trust my text editor to not mess it up - if I make a mistake with the format and break the document, all the text is all still there, so I can go in and fix it. With a Word/Libreoffice document, the software is doing all sorts of stuff behind my back, so I have no clue what it may have broken, or how to fix it.
- vkazanov 8y ago
  yes, all those things are just... Enraging. Having a nice diff-based change history and being able to ignore formatting issues when writing is a blessing.
Topolomancer 8y ago
> 1) can't have proper a version control with those binary documents word processors generate. And even worse (maybe): no way of fixing errors later on; arguably, the error messages of LaTeX are obscure for new users, but at least you can always reset your document to a working state.
- floren 8y ago
  Yeah, I've managed to get big Word documents into weird states where it stops numbering sections properly and could. not. fix it.

vkazanov 8y ago

From other comments: 7) collaboration is almost impossible

mnw21cam 8y ago

I have to say your points 1 and 5 (which in my opinion are the same thing) is the killer reason why I write stuff in LaTeX (apart from the fact that I hate Microsoft Word with a loathing and find LibreOffice even worse). The other thing is that a LaTeX document is text - I trust my text editor to not mess it up - if I make a mistake with the format and break the document, all the text is all still there, so I can go in and fix it. With a Word/Libreoffice document, the software is doing all sorts of stuff behind my back, so I have no clue what it may have broken, or how to fix it.

vkazanov 8y ago
yes, all those things are just... Enraging. Having a nice diff-based change history and being able to ignore formatting issues when writing is a blessing.

Topolomancer 8y ago

> 1) can't have proper a version control with those binary documents word processors generate. And even worse (maybe): no way of fixing errors later on; arguably, the error messages of LaTeX are obscure for new users, but at least you can always reset your document to a working state.

floren 8y ago
Yeah, I've managed to get big Word documents into weird states where it stops numbering sections properly and could. not. fix it.