4 ms·

Even including things like floating figure placement? I'll admit, I haven't kept up with all the features along these lines that Word provides these days: I kno

by Steuard 12y ago

Even including things like floating figure placement? I'll admit, I haven't kept up with all the features along these lines that Word provides these days: I know it's been catching up. (In fact, I'm curious to know: do most folks using Word these days actually use the semantic elements like "title" and "heading 2"? Or is it still common for people to just hit "bold" and enlarge the font size?)

ygra 12y ago
Floating figure placement has been possible for ages, but with the caveat that the figure has to be anchored to a particular paragraph and Word makes sure that the anchored paragraph and the figure appear on the same page, sometimes moving both the paragraph and the figure on the next page, e.g. ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ┌────┐ <space>│ │ └────┘ That's about the only annoyance. Not that LaTeX is without fault here either, oftentimes giving up on figure placement (even with »here«) and putting them at the end of the section. Math typesetting has been possible since 2007 in an integrated form (whereas the old formula editor was just an embedded OLE object, which you couldn't style, and which often didn't match the surrounding text in size and font). The syntax is similar to LaTeX, although (in my opinion) easier and faster to type because of a few syntactic niceties (see UTN #28). And if you wanted automatic ToC generation your option has always (back at least several versions and two or three decades) been to use the proper styles Heading 1–9. Generally, if you want to keep your sanity you should be using styles everywhere and always. I don't use physical formatting at all. The benefits of that are the same as in LaTeX: You can change styles at will without going through all of your document and it's far easier to achieve a consistent look of the document. But yes, every now and then I see people who approach »I want to make this a heading« as »I need to make this bold and larger«. I'm not sure how they are thinking (especially since Word since 2007 made styles much more prominent than the physical formatting), but there are such people. LaTeX's advantage here is that it needs education to use at all, which means that's the point where one can basically say »There are no ways of making things bold, only ways of emphasising more, which may be rendered as bold«. Word can and will be used without training and the results are exactly what you'd expect in that case.

by Steuard 12y ago

ygra 12y ago

Floating figure placement has been possible for ages, but with the caveat that the figure has to be anchored to a particular paragraph and Word makes sure that the anchored paragraph and the figure appear on the same page, sometimes moving both the paragraph and the figure on the next page, e.g. ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ┌────┐ <space>│ │ └────┘ That's about the only annoyance. Not that LaTeX is without fault here either, oftentimes giving up on figure placement (even with »here«) and putting them at the end of the section. Math typesetting has been possible since 2007 in an integrated form (whereas the old formula editor was just an embedded OLE object, which you couldn't style, and which often didn't match the surrounding text in size and font). The syntax is similar to LaTeX, although (in my opinion) easier and faster to type because of a few syntactic niceties (see UTN #28). And if you wanted automatic ToC generation your option has always (back at least several versions and two or three decades) been to use the proper styles Heading 1–9. Generally, if you want to keep your sanity you should be using styles everywhere and always. I don't use physical formatting at all. The benefits of that are the same as in LaTeX: You can change styles at will without going through all of your document and it's far easier to achieve a consistent look of the document. But yes, every now and then I see people who approach »I want to make this a heading« as »I need to make this bold and larger«. I'm not sure how they are thinking (especially since Word since 2007 made styles much more prominent than the physical formatting), but there are such people. LaTeX's advantage here is that it needs education to use at all, which means that's the point where one can basically say »There are no ways of making things bold, only ways of emphasising more, which may be rendered as bold«. Word can and will be used without training and the results are exactly what you'd expect in that case.