[pdftex] MS Word hell, TeX heaven?

[ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:

> Herman Bruyninckx <Herman.Bruyninckx at mech.kuleuven.ac.be>:

[...]

> > - perenniality: one can be sure to be able to access (La)TeX archives at
> >   any time in the distant future.
> 
> Yes -- good point. Opening old Word files can easily be quite
> unpleasant.

So can opening old LaTeX files, BTW.  Try opening the files for a book
written prior to LaTeX2e and see if the style files for the fonts, 
graphics inclusion, references etc are still around and can be made to 
work.  And even if they are, whether the layout is the same, as subtle 
changes have been made to some of the format files (my books are in Times 
of one variant or another).

I'm afraid I find these arguments pretty specious.  People do write
scholarly books and theses in Word and with modern versions it is quite
reliable.  I would not choose to use it, because I do not like the look of
its results and I prefer to work on Unix/Linux.  But designing and laying
out a book in LaTeX is not `heaven' and there are plenty of dreadful
examples on my bookshelf.  With 3 books over the last 9 years, one with
four editions (and about 20 printings), I am only two well aware of the
costs.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595