From: CB <cb.lists@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Context, LaTeX, or an XML for academic writing?
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 10:05:08 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4283EF34.1090507@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <42835E52.20802@kpatents.com>
Ville Voipio wrote:
>
>
> I am not saying HTML is bad and PDF good. HTML is extremely good for
> many purposes. Wiki is a good example of this, and so are many web
> pages. But as HTML is not necessarily a good form for a book,
> concentrating on PDF is probably a better idea.
>
I hadn't thought of half the stuff you mention, which comes of the fact
that my requirements come anticipation rather than recent use (I'm
returning to academia after 10 years being in jobs where the only
writing I've had to do is reports in Word for semi-literate business
people). I thought it might be good to pick and learn a system now
rather than start with one format only to find deficiencies and have to
switch later.
I can see a place for books and articles in HTML, but as a supplement to
PDF for fast online browsing (and in that context I don't see a problem
with just reducing layout standards). But I agree PDF is the thing to
concentrate on for fully-formatted output.
>
> Well, if everyone around you is using Word and requires you to
> collaborate by using Word, you are up to your lower back in
> alligators. On the other hand, there are ways around this. What I use
> when commenting on other people's texts, I want to have the texts as
> PDF. Then I just simply write a mail with my comments:
>
> "p. 123, paragraph 2: Not so. Dr. Frankenstein proved this to be wrong
> in 1974, see Journal of Unlikely Science, 1865, pp. 1456-1505"
>
> p.127, figure 2.13: I don't get it."
That seems fine to me, but many people are often so wowed by GUI stuff
that they wouldn't consider using this rather than the pretty marginal
notes that Word produces. I have a friend in academia here who does
successfully resist the (sometimes quite heavy) insistence on Word. She
just says that she's not willing to be forced to use the products of a
foreign monopolist which has been found guilty of large-scale corporate
malfeasance in multiple jurisdictions worldwide. Being a
humanities-based academic, she can get away with this ;) Her colleagues
yawn and tell her to use what she wants.
>
>
> Really, I hate it when people send me their Word files. I am quite
> convinced I am not the only one. The annotation mechanism in Word is
> similar to almost everything else in the program: looks easy, feels
> easy at first, makes you run circles on the walls in the end.
>
> - Ville
That's also my experience. I've worked in a company which has hired very
expensive Microsoft consultants to come in and set up some
Sharepoint+Word-based workflow for documentation. The system was so
complex and fragile, it got dumped within weeks and everyone went back
to hacking up adhoc Word docs again, copying and pasting like fury.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2005-05-13 0:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2005-05-07 2:58 CB
2005-05-09 9:48 ` Ville Voipio
2005-05-10 23:52 ` CB
2005-05-11 6:52 ` Henning Hraban Ramm
2005-05-12 13:46 ` Ville Voipio
2005-05-13 0:05 ` CB [this message]
2005-05-14 12:45 Tobias Wolf
2005-05-16 17:50 ` John R. Culleton
2005-05-17 0:59 ` Tobias Burnus
2005-05-17 12:41 ` Tobias Wolf
2005-05-17 4:03 ` Matthias Weber
[not found] ` <e06bd0fe050517055047c3210b@mail.gmail.com>
2005-05-17 12:52 ` Tobias Wolf
2005-05-17 22:41 Ville Voipio
2005-05-18 2:10 ` Paul Tremblay
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