[OS X TeX] TeX and the wild wild world out there

[Paul Vickers]

Schremmer

I only meant aesthetically unacceptable -- case in point, I still  
read the thesis and it was really quite good. I am just saying that  
the maths bits looked horrible and that made it harder to read. Hell,  
I even us MSWord myself (though less and less). In July I sent magnum  
opus to the publisher, all 200,000 words and all written with MSWord.  
It looks nice 'cause I spent a lot of time on the template. What pi$ 
$sed me off were the bugs: the numbered lists that kept resetting  
themselves; the indented lists that kept changing their indents; the  
wonderful master document feature that keeps wanting to put new  
chapters on left hand pages despite instructions to the opposite,  
etc. etc. Oh, and the (albeit very few) equations in it look horrible  
'cause they're set in Equation Editor. I have started redoing them  
all in LaTeX Equation Service and importing the PDFs.

So, to sum up: Word is a pain a) 'cause its maths is ugly and b)  
'cause its bugs make you pull your hair out in frustration. Of  
course, LaTeX wastes similar amounts of time in learning how to do  
things that are simply in Word but the advantage is that a) once  
learnt I now know how to do it and b) it doesn't keep changing its  
mind like Word.

I never meant to come across as a LaTeX bigot: people can use Word as  
much as they like. But lets not ignore its negatives.

Best

Paul
On 29 Nov 2006, at 19:21, Alain Schremmer wrote:

> Paul Vickers wrote:
>
>> Not sure 'acceptable' and 'ugly as hell' fit together.... I just   
>> assessed a PhD thesis which had lots of fairly simple maths in it  
>> --  mostly set theory type stuff, very few subscripts, no  
>> fractions,  integrals, roots etc. Because the thesis was prepared  
>> in Word the  maths was, as you say, ugly as hell; however, to my  
>> eyes that makes  it unacceptable as it's actually very hard to  
>> read. It's a BIT LIKE  WRITING ALL YOUR THESIS BODY TEXT IN  
>> MONOSPACED CAPS.
>
> Yes, and let's not accept, say, what the next Grothendieck/Perelman  
> write because she doesn't want to take away any time from her  
> mathematical work to learn the beautiful LaTeX. Hey, if she wants  
> me to read her, she better accomodate my eyes and kiss my feet too.
>
> I think that this kind of attitude is truly sad.
>
> Regards
> --schremmer
>
>
>
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