[texhax] TeX v. Word, etc.

Yuri Robbers yuri.robbers at gmail.com
Thu Aug 24 15:18:24 CEST 2006


Hi,

I feel the ODF format is a step in the right direction when it comes to
office documents. I don't think it's quite there yet, but it's probably the
best we can hope for. My main two objections are:

1) Not all vendors support it (actually, apart from the commercial version
of OpenOffice, none of the commercial office programs support it, to my
knowledge), and many explicitly intend to not use it (probably since format
chances force people to update their software, which is a major source of
income for vendors). What use is a standard, ISO-certified or not, when only
a small minority uses it, or even intends to use it?

2) It is XML-based, which on the one hand is a good, well-documented, open
standard. On the other hand, however, it always strikes me as excessively
bloated. Take MathML for example. Apart form it being far from complete,
even one of the simple formulae it can actually represent takes up far more
space than the equivalent in any variant of TeX or most Computer Algebra
Systems (Mathematica being the one I'm most familiar with). This excessive
bloat wastes storage space (which admittedly is not all that expensive these
days) and also makes it a pain in the behind to create or edit it by hand
(for example when salvaging a damaged file that one should have backed up
but didn't).

Of course any reader should bear in mind that my knowledge of XML is
somewhere in the range from nothing to very nothing (I have only written XML
on very few occasions), so perhaps my views as expressed above are actually
quite naive...

Conclusion? I don't like word processors, I'm quite happy with LaTeX and
friends, and will probably be for a long time to come...

Cheers,
Yuri.

On 8/24/06, Will, Paul (P.) <pwill1 at visteon.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> One of the main gripes in this question seems to be the question of the
> portability of files between different versions of MS Office/Word, (or any
> other commercial wordprocessor app. for that matter, but I'll use Word as
> the illustrative example) and the fact that the Office/Word file format is
> subject to change between versions, which is not conducive to a long term
> archiving and document recovery.
>
> The advent of an ISO standard document format namely, ODF, would, on the
> face of it, appear to provide some sort of solution to this particular
> long
> term storage problem. It would be interesting to know what others in the
> community feel about ODF in this respect.
>
> Regards,
>
> P.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: texhax-bounces at tug.org [mailto:texhax-bounces at tug.org] On Behalf Of
> Reinhard Kotucha
> Sent: 21 August 2006 22:10
> To: John R. Culleton
> Cc: texhax at tug.org; Michael Barr; David C. Walden
> Subject: Re: [texhax] TeX v. Word, etc.
>
>
> >>>>> "John" == John R Culleton <john at wexfordpress.com> writes:
>
>   > In your comparison don't forget that there are other versions of
>   > TeX beyond LaTeX. For example Context will do some prepress
>   > functions, such as imposition.
>
> If imposition comes into play, I wonder what we are talking about. Do we
> talk about office software or professional typesetting?
>
> I think it's time to ask the original poster what he intends to do.
>
> Otherwise this discussion becomes endless.  If we are talking about
> professional typesetting, I think that it doesn't make sense to compare
> LaTeX/Context with Word, it would make more sense to compare it with
> InDesign.
>
> If we talk about office software, I fear that the discussion becomes
> endless
> anyway, without any result.
>
> Regards,
>   Reinhard
>
> --
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone:
> +49-511-4592165
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:
> reinhard.kotucha at web.de
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is
> NO.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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