[texhax] MS Word & Mathtype to TeX

[Victor Ivrii]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Barbara Beeton <bnb at ams.org> wrote:

>    Can journals not afford a new version of MS Word once every ten years?
>
> if it were only every ten years, that
> wouldn't be so bad, but it's really much
> more frequent than that.  also, it's not
> a matter of a single new copy of a new
> version; it requires a license for every
> single person in the organization who is
> going to touch any of this material.  and
> also for all authors.  okay, as far as the
> ams is concerned, it's already installed
> on every windows workstation used in the
> organization, but that doesn't get around
> the fact that version x of word doesn't
> reliably produce the same output as version
> x-2, and for reuse of archival material,
> this means that everything must be proofread
> all over again.  skilled technical proofreaders
> are scarce, and becoming more rare as time goes
> on, so this is very expensive now, and likely
> to become much more so in the future.

Add lack of complete compatibility not only between versions but also
between platforms (MacOSX/Windows), lack of UNIX support,.... and add
jerks like me who getting PDF file produced by M$W are less than
excited (and have good reasons for this).

Victor

-- 
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Victor Ivrii, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto
http://www.math.toronto.edu/ivrii