Re: Context, LaTeX, or an XML for academic writing?

[CB <cb.lists@gmail.com>]

Hi Ville,

Thanks for your reply. I don't have much more to say on this yet, but 
have added a few comments below.


>
> I was in a similar situation a few years ago (writing my PhD thesis). 
> I think you are absolutely right when you avoid Word and everything 
> Wordish. Making a big document with Word requires a lot of knowledge 
> about what you should avoid. And in the end you'll still spend your 
> nights wondering why the **** the crossreferences or page numbers go 
> wrong.


Absolutely. Word seems easy at first, but I've watched people go gray 
trying to get large texts to do what they want, close to deadline.

>
> However, your wishlist looks a bit difficult.

Actually your comment here might suggest how far we have to go then, as 
I'd consider my wishlist a very roughly stated but really quite minimal 
set of requirements for academic writing.

>
> The situation becomes much more complicated if you need RTF. It is a 
> completely different story, a word processor editable format. I guess 
> you don't really want to distribute your work in editable format, and 
> PDF can be read with virtually any computer.
>
> I'd say it'll fill number 2, as well. But RTF, no. There may be 
> kludges to make it kind of, you know, a bit like, errr, RTFish, but 
> nothing really good. The reason is simple: the two things are far 
> apart from each other. 


Since posting I've thought a bit more about why I wanted RTF, and 
realised it wouldn't do what I wanted anyway. The 'inter-operation with 
Word users' I was referring to is primarily this: it's common amongst 
academics I know here in Australia to use some of the collaboration 
features of Word (marginal comments and revision control, particularly). 
RTF wouldn't actually help with those anyway. So there's really no way 
around this without using Word, which I will only do at gunpoint.