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For short, quick-turnaround documents that get exchanged and redlined by multiple non-technical types (e.g., contracts): Microsoft Word, because it's the global

For short, quick-turnaround documents that get exchanged and redlined by multiple non-technical types (e.g., contracts): Microsoft Word, because it's the global standard and the network effect is in full force. For books and similar long docs: Definitely LaTeX (preferably with Emacs org-mode), because Word has a way of f[oul]ing up automatic cross-references even in short documents; pandoc can then turn the LaTeX into whatever other format you want.

tombert 5y ago
> For short, quick-turnaround documents that get exchanged and redlined by multiple non-technical types (e.g., contracts): Microsoft Word, because it's the global standard and the network effect is in full force. I agree for most people, though I feel like I'm pretty quick with Markdown + Pandoc -> LaTeX. Definitely agree with the citations stuff though; Pandoc's BibTeX support is generally good, and I've had substantially fewer headaches with it than trying to get the reference stuff in MSWord to work.
1-more 5y ago
> For books and similar long docs Weirdly enough I know someone with a book published by a big programming book company, and they accept manuscripts in Word only.
- smogcutter 5y ago
  This is likely unrelated to typesetting: it’s for the track changes feature. The final files that go to the printer are probably not produced by word.
  - 1-more 5y ago
    Oh yeah that's for sure. And since they have a house style for everything it'd be a bit silly to faff about making your \lstset look just so when the printer would need to re-set (reset?) all of it.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
> For books and similar long docs: ... I've worked in the book publishing industry and I've typeset books both using QuarkXPress (now everybody moved on to InDesign) and LaTeX. Using Word to typeset a book is a major PITA. Nobody in the professional book publishing industry is using Word to typeset books (well, ok, maybe 0.1% of masochists out there). Word is convenient to quickly edit crappy looking documents: it's a document editor. It's not a typesetting program.

tombert 5y ago

> For short, quick-turnaround documents that get exchanged and redlined by multiple non-technical types (e.g., contracts): Microsoft Word, because it's the global standard and the network effect is in full force. I agree for most people, though I feel like I'm pretty quick with Markdown + Pandoc -> LaTeX. Definitely agree with the citations stuff though; Pandoc's BibTeX support is generally good, and I've had substantially fewer headaches with it than trying to get the reference stuff in MSWord to work.

1-more 5y ago

> For books and similar long docs Weirdly enough I know someone with a book published by a big programming book company, and they accept manuscripts in Word only.

smogcutter 5y ago
This is likely unrelated to typesetting: it’s for the track changes feature. The final files that go to the printer are probably not produced by word.
- 1-more 5y ago
  Oh yeah that's for sure. And since they have a house style for everything it'd be a bit silly to faff about making your \lstset look just so when the printer would need to re-set (reset?) all of it.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

> For books and similar long docs: ... I've worked in the book publishing industry and I've typeset books both using QuarkXPress (now everybody moved on to InDesign) and LaTeX. Using Word to typeset a book is a major PITA. Nobody in the professional book publishing industry is using Word to typeset books (well, ok, maybe 0.1% of masochists out there). Word is convenient to quickly edit crappy looking documents: it's a document editor. It's not a typesetting program.