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If you want to use Word, then that's great, but when you start saying what other people 'should' be doing then they're going to speak up. > writing should happ

If you want to use Word, then that's great, but when you start saying what other people 'should' be doing then they're going to speak up. > writing should happen in "word processing software" Writing should happen where you are comfortable editing text. I am comfortable in same editor where I write code. > To people who say "Word sux", I say "That just means you don't know how to use Word properly". Writing any markup or markdown syntax in an IDE is a disaster for the creative process. To all the people who say "Writing markup in an IDE sux", I say "That just means you don't know how to use it properly". I can write in a flow and apply/change formatting easily. I can jump around and rearrange documents with ease. And it is in a format that can be opened and read by native software on almost any computer. If you think that Jack Kerouac would prefer MS Word over a much simpler plain text editor, I don't agree.

bostik 3y ago
> Writing should happen where you are comfortable editing text. For that particular context of text. I write my code, notes, text and emails in vim. Some in markdown. But to this day, I still miss the incredible usability of LyX 1.x when writing pure long-form text.[ß] I could force all writing to occur within central 60% of the editable screen height [doable with vim but not as cleanly]. No whitespace or formatting issues, ever - set the document defaults according to my liking and it would feel "just right". Proper rendering and visually correct editing of math formulas as part of text. Oh my. Fond memories of being able to type '<raw latex hotkey>\frac' and continue fitting in the values... If it had had vim's search-powered navigation, it would have been nearly perfect. LyX 2.x was a step up in visual appeal and two steps down in raw usability. I've since picked up writing raw latex where I need good formatting, just because I could not make LyX 2.x bend to my taste anymore. ß: Back on early 2000's, I wrote a book in LyX. As well as all my university course papers, including the master's thesis.
gertlex 3y ago
> but when you start saying what other people 'should' be doing then they're going to speak up. That's not a prerequisite for the Latex folks, in my experience :D (I'm also in the "wrote my masters thesis in word, including the fair number of equations" group)
- yashrk 3y ago
  Of course you can choose what you use for your personal pipeline. But Word for collaborative work is a nightmare. Sometimes fastest way to work with the science text or documentation in a Word document is to hire a freelancer to retype all the text in LaTeX or something else. It's a kind of Trolley problem: sometimes Word fanboys, unfortunately, _should_ suffer to let all the team get the job done.
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    > But Word for collaborative work is a nightmare Why? It has comments, tracking etc. Concurrent edition i impossible, though (even when MS says it is possible). For that Google Docs is great (or some self-hosted systems)
    - lightspot21 3y ago
      > Why? It has comments, tracking etc. Concurrent edition i impossible, though (even when MS says it is possible). For that Google Docs is great (or some self-hosted systems) It doesn't scale. At all. I used to work at a university lab group where all 30 of us would need to concurrently write, edit and review 150+-page, heavily technical reports with lots of diagrams and tables spanning pages. To be clear, most of the time all of us were working on the exact same huge document. Word's version tracking stood no chance. Formatting was regularly off, tables were breaking apart, diagrams misplaced. Syncing was extremely bad, often with entire paragraphs in changes going missing, other times deleted portion were reappearing, all that jazz. LaTeX on an online collaborative environment (well-known, not naming it -this post isnt an ad) on the other hand, despite its archaic way of working, never showed any of those problems. If a table was placed somewhere, we could be sure it would never get moved to random places, and changes/rewrites would be always synced correctly (as LaTeX source is plain text, merging algorithms/CRDTs have a much easier time).
      - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
        > all 30 of us would need to concurrently write, edit and review 150+-page As I wrote, it does not work at all for concurrent access - I mentioned Google Docs & Co for this. > LaTeX on an online collaborative environment (well-known, not naming it -this post isnt an ad) I wrote my MSc and PhD thesis in LaTeX (physics) so I know how fantastic it is. You write content without caring for the container - and since changing anything is black magic you give up and do not try (which is a VERY good thing - it just works). I never used Overleaf though (I guess that this is the product you refer to). I guess that having a concurrent system (such as etertab or something - or Overleaf if it supports truly concurrent editing) is the graal. The drawback is that you need to know the language to cooperate. In a university setting this is not complicated, in a company - not so much.

bostik 3y ago

> Writing should happen where you are comfortable editing text. For that particular context of text. I write my code, notes, text and emails in vim. Some in markdown. But to this day, I still miss the incredible usability of LyX 1.x when writing pure long-form text.[ß] I could force all writing to occur within central 60% of the editable screen height [doable with vim but not as cleanly]. No whitespace or formatting issues, ever - set the document defaults according to my liking and it would feel "just right". Proper rendering and visually correct editing of math formulas as part of text. Oh my. Fond memories of being able to type '<raw latex hotkey>\frac' and continue fitting in the values... If it had had vim's search-powered navigation, it would have been nearly perfect. LyX 2.x was a step up in visual appeal and two steps down in raw usability. I've since picked up writing raw latex where I need good formatting, just because I could not make LyX 2.x bend to my taste anymore. ß: Back on early 2000's, I wrote a book in LyX. As well as all my university course papers, including the master's thesis.

gertlex 3y ago

> but when you start saying what other people 'should' be doing then they're going to speak up. That's not a prerequisite for the Latex folks, in my experience :D (I'm also in the "wrote my masters thesis in word, including the fair number of equations" group)

yashrk 3y ago
Of course you can choose what you use for your personal pipeline. But Word for collaborative work is a nightmare. Sometimes fastest way to work with the science text or documentation in a Word document is to hire a freelancer to retype all the text in LaTeX or something else. It's a kind of Trolley problem: sometimes Word fanboys, unfortunately, _should_ suffer to let all the team get the job done.
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  > But Word for collaborative work is a nightmare Why? It has comments, tracking etc. Concurrent edition i impossible, though (even when MS says it is possible). For that Google Docs is great (or some self-hosted systems)
  - lightspot21 3y ago
    > Why? It has comments, tracking etc. Concurrent edition i impossible, though (even when MS says it is possible). For that Google Docs is great (or some self-hosted systems) It doesn't scale. At all. I used to work at a university lab group where all 30 of us would need to concurrently write, edit and review 150+-page, heavily technical reports with lots of diagrams and tables spanning pages. To be clear, most of the time all of us were working on the exact same huge document. Word's version tracking stood no chance. Formatting was regularly off, tables were breaking apart, diagrams misplaced. Syncing was extremely bad, often with entire paragraphs in changes going missing, other times deleted portion were reappearing, all that jazz. LaTeX on an online collaborative environment (well-known, not naming it -this post isnt an ad) on the other hand, despite its archaic way of working, never showed any of those problems. If a table was placed somewhere, we could be sure it would never get moved to random places, and changes/rewrites would be always synced correctly (as LaTeX source is plain text, merging algorithms/CRDTs have a much easier time).
    - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
      > all 30 of us would need to concurrently write, edit and review 150+-page As I wrote, it does not work at all for concurrent access - I mentioned Google Docs & Co for this. > LaTeX on an online collaborative environment (well-known, not naming it -this post isnt an ad) I wrote my MSc and PhD thesis in LaTeX (physics) so I know how fantastic it is. You write content without caring for the container - and since changing anything is black magic you give up and do not try (which is a VERY good thing - it just works). I never used Overleaf though (I guess that this is the product you refer to). I guess that having a concurrent system (such as etertab or something - or Overleaf if it supports truly concurrent editing) is the graal. The drawback is that you need to know the language to cooperate. In a university setting this is not complicated, in a company - not so much.