>--- Forwarded mail from [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 6:14 PM
>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Subject: Re: .doc file concerns
>>
>> The thing is, most writers seem to prefer WYSIWYG editors
>> such as Word or Frame
>> Maker to using mark-up languages. This is reasonable,
>> because they're much more
>> productive with such tools,
>Has anybody done studies? My guess would be that getting an initial
>design slapped out would be somewhat faster with Word, but that
>redoing the document would be faster with something like LaTeX.
>In any case, there is at least one editor claiming to do essentially
>WYSIWYG with LaTeX.
>I have no doubt but that designers like Word and FrameMaker better,
>but there's a surprising lack of correlation between what seems easy
>to use and what makes you more productive.
Well, you're a programmer, and they're authors. Your mindsets are different,
so different things make you more productive. Giving an artist a programming
language is often a disaster, just as giving someone like me a paint brush is.
> especially since they're much
>> more concerned with
>> an attractive presentation than are engineers who happen to
>> write simple documents.
>>
>TeX was written by a man very concerned with how his documents
>looked, and they include ways to do very tricky typesetting.
>Knuth stopped submitting papers to journals that could not typeset
>them to his standards. Since TeX, probably the most widely used
>markup language, was designed by somebody who was concerned with
>an attractive presentation and did not write simple documents,
>there is something wrong with your argument.
Okay, maybe TeX can produce documents comparable to professional authoring
tools such as Frame Maker. It's also a lot cheaper. So why aren't the
professionals using it? I've yet to meet anyone who writes for a living
who uses TeX, even if they're familiar with it.
>If I'm going to write a simple document, I frequently use Word.
>If I'm going to write something complicated, I use a better tool,
>such as LaTeX or a real page layout program.
The authors agree with you. I've met only one professional writer who
prefers Word over a more capable tool, and he was a relatively poor quality
contractor thrust into a management position. Everyone under him went back
to Frame after his departure, having made the same argument.
>> Choosing an inferior tool just because the version control
>> system can't handle
>> a full-featured one is a poor way to work.
>>
>On the other hand, using a tool that makes products that can be
>stored, compared, branched, merged, and so forth is attractive.
>I would be surprised to find that any version control system
>would handle Word documents in such a versatile fashion.
They could, if diff and merge tools existed. Most authors I know only
care about storage. They don't care about branching or merging, except
under extreme circumstances. And even then, they avoid branching and
merging; whether this is because the can't or won't understand basic
version control concepts, or because the merge tools are inadequate,
I don't know.
>--- End of forwarded message from [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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