3 ms·
Given that he's apparently relaying something that actually happened, Bernstein can't be strawmanning it. In fact he can't be strawmanning it at all, as Micros
by Sniffnoy 6y ago
Given that he's apparently relaying something that actually happened, Bernstein can't be strawmanning it. In fact he can't be strawmanning it at all, as Microsoft Word doesn't make arguments or claims. You appear to mean something more like "Bernstein is incorrectly portraying how Microsoft Word works." But as I said Bernstein presents this story as something that actually happened, not a hypothetical example, so I guess what you actually mean is "I suspect Bernstein is making up this story"?
Regardless, Bernstein does in fact address this criticism in the note added yesterday. Yes, it has automatic list numbering, but in order to achieve the desired formatting, the users had, instead of altering the formatting appropriately, removed this automatic numbering, because Microsoft Word doesn't make these sorts of distinctions clear and explicit.
- s17n 6y ago> the users had, instead of altering the formatting appropriately, removed this automatic numbering, because Microsoft Word doesn't make these sorts of distinctions clear and explicit. You can get into much worse situations than this once you leave the "happy path" in LaTeX.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoIf the argument that people who use Word that don't really know how to use it can end up using it inefficient ways, then doesn't it even more apply to Latex. I could probably come up with an anecdote about someone who tried to use Latex but spent hours trying to figure out how to get the format they wanted and got frustrating trying to debug their scripts. If we want to compare tools, we should not compare expert users of one tool with novices of another tool.
- jcrawfordor 6y agoIs there a single serious LaTeX user that doesn't have a story of losing hours of time because they didn't understand some of the internals well enough? I've probably lost days before.
- abhinav22 6y agoHonestly I never lost anything in latex.
- 314 6y agoIf you have never run into problems with macros expanding in the wrong sort of environment then you have probably not used it very extensively. If you have run into the problem of switching commands because of their fragile-ness then is it true that you never lost any time debugging?
- abhinav22 6y agoAh I never used the macros, just the standard commands and using pre styled layouts. That would explain it :-) But I guess it’s not easy to save work in latex when in macro mode?