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0 pointsteacup5012y ago0 comments

Yes, you used LaTeX in school. Best argument ever.

That is absolutely weak man. If you live out in the real world, there aren't plenty of alternatives.

I kid you not, I keep buying MS Word, despite hating it passionately, because it's the only word processing document format that we can share in common with business partners, our legal counsel, accounting, etc.

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dragontamer12y ago· 4 in thread

I live in the real world. I use the tools I need to communicate with who I need.

When a customer asks for a Word Document, I deliver a Word Document. When a customer asks for a 200-page print-out, I deliver it however the hell I feel like it. I'll deliver it using InDesign if I believe its the best tool for the job.

Here's why Microsoft Office is used. Because it works. Sticking with a standard office font works across Mac, Windows, and yes, even Linux (thanks to Crosstools). Abiword and OpenOffice are much better at reading Microsoft Office documents than they are at reading each other.

But when it comes down to beautiful typesetting, semantic markup and the like? LaTeX is quite hard to beat.

When it comes to opening up a 25 year old document and it still looking exactly like how it was typeset in Word 95? Well... Microsoft actually has accomplished that quite decently. Tell me, does Libre Office support the StarWord format as well as Word 2013 supports a Word95 document?

On the other hand, LaTeX supports documents from the 80s quite well, ditto with TeX.

teacup50OP12y ago

So -- your original point is moot, because the MS monopoly means we all need to buy Microsoft Office anyway.

Got it.

ZeroGravitas12y ago

Word changes its layout if you plug a different printer in, never mind open documents from 1995. It was never designed to keep a consistent layout and it fails miserably in practice.

FireBeyond12y ago

Bah, this is unfair to put on Word. Every word processor will do the same, if the default margins, or the margins set by the user fall outside the ability of the printer vis-a-vis printable page area.

Blaming Word because some cheap printer isn't able to use as much of the page as something else is shooting the messenger. And Word is word processing software. It attempts to do the most logical thing - reflows the document to fit within usable margins. If you need absolute page layout control, use a tool devised for that purpose, like InDesign. To not, and complain, is to complain that HTML and web-browsers can't be relied on with certainty for pixel perfect display.

dragontamer12y ago

Fair point. PDFs (and TeX's DVI format) are better for that, but PDFs aren't very editable. Microsoft XPS should be used now for long-term read-only document storage.

Nonetheless, its how Word is used today. I can't think of many tools with a beginner-friendly UI that can do what Word can do.

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