<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'><P>Again, thank you all for your help.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>The more I try to do things for myself, the more I have to ask other people for help.</P>
<P>I think I've figured out why: in general, there's a correlation (not a causation) between </P>
<P>doing things for oneself and doing things "piecemeal / a'la carte / on the cheap".</P>
<P> </P>
<P>Real-world example I encountered today: my bicycle had a flat tire.</P>
<P>I was trying to get from point A to point B under my own power - bicycle - rather than by oil in a car.</P>
<P>In the end, I had to call a friend to tow me to a bike shop, they had to replace the flat, </P>
<P>I had to buy other parts for the bike.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>A car is like Microsoft. All bundled up in one neat little package for the consumer.</P>
<P>Not spread out over a million files with a million bizarre extensions </P>
<P>(at least, that's how I REMEMBER TeX when I last tried to learn it, and one of the many reasons</P>
<P>I gave up on it, because I could never remember WHICH was the main file with my text in it)</P>
<P>You pay a lot more for the car, and its maintenance, than for a bicycle,</P>
<P>just as you pay a lot more for MS than you do for TeX. But, you end up using a lot of your own time</P>
<P>doing TeX than learning MS Word. And, look - look how many separate individuals in the TeX </P>
<P>support group I have distrurbed in just 3 days, whereas for MS, one might get hold of one or two</P>
<P>tech support people.<BR></P>
<P>Now, I am all about being cheap. I don't even remember the last time I bought a piece of commercial</P>
<P>software. I am merely using the Microsoft Windows XP OS that came bundled with my computers,</P>
<P>and I am using MS Word 2000 that I inherited from my (deceased) parents. </P>
<P>I have no intention of upgrading, ever, if I can avoid it.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>I do remember buying Maple computer algebra system for $120 in 2007 at the reduced student fee.</P>
<P>And an upgrade of Mathtype for $49 in 2007 or so.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>Point is: I never take ANY technology for granted - not even my socks and underwear.</P>
<P>I don't like going without, but if the effort is too much, not just by me (since I do not sew my own socks</P>
<P>and underwear!) by overseas ( I don't want my money going to companies that get rich </P>
<P>while they pay their poor workers in China, Pakistan, Vietnam practically nothing) -</P>
<P>then I WILL go sockless and underwearless if I cannot find a company where my money can go</P>
<P>that does not enslave workers.</P>
<P> </P>
<P>At the start of this year, I even tried to grow (a tiny percentage of) my own food.</P>
<P>Just to see if I could do it. Barely got out a few stalks of corn and maybe a dozen tomatoes.</P>
<P>Clearly growing food is best left to large-scale economies of scale and industrialization.</P>
<P>I say this, even though my other reason for attempting to grow food is to prepare for a world</P>
<P>without oil and petrochemicals, when oil runs out. (more accurately: when the EROI gets too low).</P>
<P> </P>
<P>But, as fantastically complex it is to get the atoms in a lump of dirt to go </P>
<P>into the right configurations to create food, or the atoms in cotton to form a sock,</P>
<P>those tasks have been perfected over millions of years of evolution and thousands of years </P>
<P>by human ingenuity. </P>
<P> </P>
<P>But, computers and software - forget about it. They're still in their infancy.</P>
<P>I'll have to wait another million years for the ideal system.</P>
<P>(Hold on - that HAS been my philosophy to date: unless the TeX group can convince me otherwise.)</P>
<P>Until then, I feel I either have to go without - such as give up publishing papers in peer-reviewed math journals</P>
<P>and the other things I like to do with computers -</P>
<P>or just throw a whole wad of money at Microsoft.<BR></P>
<P>
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</P>
<P><B>From: </B>"John C Frain" <frainj@gmail.com><BR><B>To: </B>"TeXhax" <texhax@tug.org>, "cornwall 5" <cornwall_5@comcast.net>, "William Adams" <will.adams@frycomm.com><BR><B>Sent: </B>Friday, December 16, 2011 7:24:49 PM<BR><B>Subject: </B>Re: [texhax] MS Word & Mathtype to TeX<BR><BR>The Word to Latex convertor that I mentioned in my third paragraph is<BR>that provided by the Abiword word processor. One can import a<BR>document in Word format into Abiword and then export it in LaTeX<BR>format<BR><BR>Sorry for the confusion. I must resist drafting such replies late at night.<BR><BR>Best regards<BR><BR>John<BR><BR>-- <BR>John C Frain<BR>Economics Department<BR>Trinity College Dublin<BR>Dublin 2<BR>Ireland<BR>www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html<BR>mailto:frainj@tcd.ie<BR>mailto:frainj@gmail.com<BR></P></div></body></html>