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It's an apples to oranges comparison. I want to draw a conformal mapping diagram in word and also write a 3-vector of the navier-stokes equations. Also, I wan

It's an apples to oranges comparison. I want to draw a conformal mapping diagram in word and also write a 3-vector of the navier-stokes equations. Also, I want to do a lot of tensor arithmetic with tons of superscripts and subscripts and arrows. Tell me how any of this is accomplished in Word please. Saying Word is easier to us is like saying BASIC is easier than C++.

mbreese 13y ago
You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word. Instead of LaTeX being the de facto standard for all publishing, it is relegated to very specialized uses in mathematics and some engineering. If you try to use LaTeX with a biomedical researcher, they will look at you very funny. Hell, I just had a postdoc send me figures as part of a manuscript draft where she was using Powerpoint to make the figures instead of something more appropriate like Illustrator. Most people who publish don't care about how their documents are created, they just want them to work and get published. Word does a pretty good job for this. Use the best tools for the job. Most people would tell you that BASIC is easier to use than C++, if you can write your program in BASIC. And if you don't want to deal with learning curve of C++ and you get get by with BASIC, then what's wrong with using a tool that works?
- danieldk 13y ago
  You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word. I am not fond of LaTeX. However, for some fields there are simply no dedicated programs, while there are good LaTeX packages. For instance, for my thesis I drew a lot of attribute-value matrices (in the unification grammar/HPSG sense). There is a great packages to draw these structures, both flat and in tree form. I had some hope that DocBook et al. could replace LaTeX for most uses. It's great in many respects: it's just XML, so easy to machine-interpret. Customising output is easy (via XSL stylesheets). There is good support for producing PDFs (via XSL-FO). And it supports SVG and MathML. There are also great WYSIWYG editors, such as Oxygen. However, that toolchain never became popular, because most people hate XML. The book that we never got to finish[1] is written in DocBook, equations are in MathML. The Slackware book that I once wrote [2] is also completely done in DocBook. [1] http://nlpwp.org/ http://nlpwp.org/ [2] http://rlworkman.net/howtos/slackbasics.pdf http://rlworkman.net/howtos/slackbasics.pdf
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Docbook and DITA are used a lot in the enterprise world.
    - josh-wrale 13y ago
      A good example of Docbook is basically all recent Red Hat/Fedora documentation.
- banachtarski 13y ago
  Jesus nothing is wrong. Read my comment again. I'm saying it's an apples to oranges comparison. If BASIC is all you need great. If word is all you need great. If you can get by with importing from gnuplot or R or matlab or whatever great. I'm not saying one is superior to the other. I'm saying that when I want to draw a commutative diagram, I'd rather do it in LaTeX with tikz or the xy package. I'm sick of the "HN strawman." People on these threads need to read and apply basic critical reading and logical skills. You don't need to tell ME to use the best tools for the job. I've been telling people that for fucking years. I don't why your comment annoyed me so much but it did.
  - mbreese 13y ago
    What I'm trying to say is that for the vast majority of peoe that have to produce documents, it isn't an apples to oranges comparison. For most proe, Word and LaTeX do the same thing. And one of those is vastly easier to use to get their job done. So while LaTeX is the technically superior, Word will still get the job done. And because of the network effects that working with collaborators has, People like me are stuck using Word even if I'd rather have my papers written in something else. In some fields LaTeX is the easier method to produce documents (good luck with anything more than a simple equation in Word), but those are relatively small niches.
    - Crito 13y ago
      In a similar vein, you might say that to the vast majority of people there is no difference between a screwdriver and a pry bar because most people are content with abusing screwdrivers.
      - mbreese 13y ago
        It depends on the job you're trying to do. But you can't honestly say that Word and LaTeX really have that big of a difference in intended jobs. It seems to me that they are both in the document production business.
        13y ago
- srunni 13y ago
  > If you try to use LaTeX with a biomedical researcher, they will look at you very funny. I'm a biomedical researcher, and I use LaTeX. It's my preferred method of document preparation. I know many others who use LaTeX as well.

mbreese 13y ago

You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word. Instead of LaTeX being the de facto standard for all publishing, it is relegated to very specialized uses in mathematics and some engineering. If you try to use LaTeX with a biomedical researcher, they will look at you very funny. Hell, I just had a postdoc send me figures as part of a manuscript draft where she was using Powerpoint to make the figures instead of something more appropriate like Illustrator. Most people who publish don't care about how their documents are created, they just want them to work and get published. Word does a pretty good job for this. Use the best tools for the job. Most people would tell you that BASIC is easier to use than C++, if you can write your program in BASIC. And if you don't want to deal with learning curve of C++ and you get get by with BASIC, then what's wrong with using a tool that works?

danieldk 13y ago
You know what most people would do? Use a dedicated program to create the plots and equations, export it as a PDF, and embed that in Word. I am not fond of LaTeX. However, for some fields there are simply no dedicated programs, while there are good LaTeX packages. For instance, for my thesis I drew a lot of attribute-value matrices (in the unification grammar/HPSG sense). There is a great packages to draw these structures, both flat and in tree form. I had some hope that DocBook et al. could replace LaTeX for most uses. It's great in many respects: it's just XML, so easy to machine-interpret. Customising output is easy (via XSL stylesheets). There is good support for producing PDFs (via XSL-FO). And it supports SVG and MathML. There are also great WYSIWYG editors, such as Oxygen. However, that toolchain never became popular, because most people hate XML. The book that we never got to finish[1] is written in DocBook, equations are in MathML. The Slackware book that I once wrote [2] is also completely done in DocBook. [1] http://nlpwp.org/ http://nlpwp.org/ [2] http://rlworkman.net/howtos/slackbasics.pdf http://rlworkman.net/howtos/slackbasics.pdf
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Docbook and DITA are used a lot in the enterprise world.
  - josh-wrale 13y ago
    A good example of Docbook is basically all recent Red Hat/Fedora documentation.
banachtarski 13y ago
Jesus nothing is wrong. Read my comment again. I'm saying it's an apples to oranges comparison. If BASIC is all you need great. If word is all you need great. If you can get by with importing from gnuplot or R or matlab or whatever great. I'm not saying one is superior to the other. I'm saying that when I want to draw a commutative diagram, I'd rather do it in LaTeX with tikz or the xy package. I'm sick of the "HN strawman." People on these threads need to read and apply basic critical reading and logical skills. You don't need to tell ME to use the best tools for the job. I've been telling people that for fucking years. I don't why your comment annoyed me so much but it did.
- mbreese 13y ago
  What I'm trying to say is that for the vast majority of peoe that have to produce documents, it isn't an apples to oranges comparison. For most proe, Word and LaTeX do the same thing. And one of those is vastly easier to use to get their job done. So while LaTeX is the technically superior, Word will still get the job done. And because of the network effects that working with collaborators has, People like me are stuck using Word even if I'd rather have my papers written in something else. In some fields LaTeX is the easier method to produce documents (good luck with anything more than a simple equation in Word), but those are relatively small niches.
  - Crito 13y ago
    In a similar vein, you might say that to the vast majority of people there is no difference between a screwdriver and a pry bar because most people are content with abusing screwdrivers.
    - mbreese 13y ago
      It depends on the job you're trying to do. But you can't honestly say that Word and LaTeX really have that big of a difference in intended jobs. It seems to me that they are both in the document production business.
      - 13y ago
srunni 13y ago
> If you try to use LaTeX with a biomedical researcher, they will look at you very funny. I'm a biomedical researcher, and I use LaTeX. It's my preferred method of document preparation. I know many others who use LaTeX as well.