I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'

From: Carlos Murillo <cem14_at_cornell.edu>
Date: Sun May 7 22:11:17 2000

At 06:46 PM 5/7/00 -0600, you wrote:
>Modern WordPerfect is actually quite nice, and to my knowledge it's the only
>big name word processor that runs on Linux.

The most professional, cross-platform, free procedural markup system
(that's what pros call a true "word processor") is still \TeX.
And it runs in almost every sufficiently-capable system that I know of.

Not long ago, most academic book publishers in the general area of
electrical engineering actually advocated the use of TeX by authors
and editors. Integration of the manuscript was a joyride, and the
result were always professional-looking. I enjoyed writing chapters
or individual papers for several such publication efforts in the last
ten years. Nowadays, publishers also provide Word macros in addition to
the usual TeX or LaTeX style files. The problem is, when compiling
a volume, you better have all of the contributing authors submit
their chapters using the same platform, or the integration becomes
a nightmare. I am going through exactly such misery, because
other fellow authors (and the editors) chose Word. But I would
never write my cherished equations using Word's equation editor;
they would look like crap. And all the fine details regarding
spacing and professional markup that distinguish typesetting from
simple, office-quality word processing are still absent from Word.
In order to blend my chapter into this volume, I've had to hack
(in the sense of "chop") the carefully written style files of
some guru at TeXnology Inc. While I have learned a lot about
TeX internals in the process, the fact that I am doing this
in order to make TeX's output look like Word's has caused me
unbearable pain. What the world has come to thanks to MS.
Somebody got it right earlier in the thread. Worse is better.


Carlos.
Received on Sun May 07 2000 - 22:11:17 BST