RE: [Sheflug] Re: Open Office

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

Basically it all comes down to whether you just measure the height of
the output, or whether you integrate with respect to the distribution
of content.  Richard is clearly in the former camp ;-)

>>>>> "Barrie" == Barrie Bremner <TheEnglishman [at] ecosse.net> writes:

    >> My colleagues mostly _use_ MS Office, but they _envy_ LaTeX.

    Barrie>  Excuse my ignorance, but is LaTex not like assembler?

No.  Laserjet files are like assembler, Postscript is like C, TeX is
like Lisp, and LaTeX is like SQL---verbose but straightforward.
Programming LaTeX styles and things like that is hard, but using them
is trivial.  It's just not "what you see is intended to remind you of
what you were thinking before your last DRAM refresh because you're
not capable of remembering your name for more than 15 seconds."

Office suites are basically instruments of the devil.  The idea is to
allow you to create documents without EVER thinking.  The amount of
thinking LaTeX requires is painful primarily because of the contrast
it presents with the amazingly low amount of thought that people put
into the content they're composing.

How did you guess I'm taking a break from grading exams and term
reports?  :-|

    Barrie>  Complete pain in the behind until you get to grips with
    Barrie> it (which takes a while), and then stunningly useful once
    Barrie> you have?

LaTeX?  Took me all of 30 minutes, most of that installing AUC-TeX and
reading the AUC-TeX manual.  Basic LaTeX is easier than basic HTML,
and far more useful in terms of producing "finished" documents.

I admit, I already knew nearly 10 programming languages and the TeX
equation syntax (type `$', and spell it as you would say it with
letters and digits and many operators standing for themselves and
everything else prefixed with `\', then a terminating `$') by the time
LaTeX was available.


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