[pdftex] MS Word hell, TeX heaven?

[Magnus Lie Hetland]

Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren <r.m.b.lindgren at usit.uio.no>:
>
> [Magnus Lie Hetland]
> 
> | I suppose these data don't support your hypothesis, but I've actually
> | written a 600 page book in Word -- though I must admit each chapter
> | was a separate file ;)
> 
> with tables, styles, images and cross-references?  

OK -- you've got me on the cross-references. Yes, I did use styles and
tables (although the tables were reformatted by the publisher, in some
page layout program; they didn't actually use Word for the final
layout :)

This is actually a very good argument in favour of LaTeX (which is, as
I keep mentioning, what I *prefer* to use ;). I had to split and merge
some chapter as I went along, and all references to chapter numbers
and the like then had to be updated manually -- this required quite a
bit of proofreading.

As far as I know, it *is* possible to use automatic references in Word
as well (i believe I have done so myself at one time), so perhaps this
is only an argument against the document template used by the
publisher... :]

-- 
Magnus Lie Hetland               "Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." 
http://hetland.org                                   -- Indiana Jones