[X4U] RE: Alternatives to MS Word

[Stroller]

On Oct 5, 2005, at 3:26 pm, Bill Bauldry wrote:

> For technical (read that as math or science) writing the best choice is
> LaTeX. This software is a typesetting system that produces "camera 
> ready
> copy" for publishing... One of the best TeX systems
> available is TeXShop on OS X using TeTeX. See:
>     TeXShop: http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop/
>     TeTeX:   http://www.rna.nl/ii.html
>
> I did a book in Word long ago - typesetting was a nightmare. I 
> switched: My
> second book (and third and ...) was done with LaTeX -- I'll never go 
> back.

I've been meaning to try LaTeX for a while - it sounds very good, but 
I've been put off because there seems no way to avoid learning yet 
another mark-up language in order to use it.

I might add that every LaTeX website I've ever seen gives examples 
using the most BORING layout ever - uniformly Times serif fonts and 
looking like a university textbook. I know that it's possible to do 
clever stuff using LaTeX, so why doesn't anyone ever produce anything 
clean & stylish with it?

I started using Pages this week, which is a whole different barrel of 
piscines - the less technical might well enjoy it as a 
Word-alternative. It does all your basic word-processy stuff, but when 
formatting it tends to take a document-centric view - every thing that 
you type is classified under one of half-a-dozen or so "paragraph 
styles". One can change the font of a paragraph easily, just by 
highlighting the paragraph & clicking the "Font" button, but now a 
little red triangle appears next to the "Body" style in the "Paragraph 
styles" drawer. Simply right-click the "Body" style in the drawer & 
choose "redefine style from selection" and the paragraph text 
throughout the entire document will correct itself. You can do the same 
thing with headings and sub-headings, bulleted text and so on, defining 
new styles when you want to.

The document I'm working on is a semi-technical document with sections 
showing command-line input in a Unix shell, and so I have a "body 
style" for the text and a "console style" for the command-line stuff. I 
don't need to change font, change font size and alter the indentation 
each time I start a new section, I just click on my predefined style. 
If I decide to change the indentation of one style or experiment with 
Bitstream Vera Sans for the fixed-width stuff instead of Courier New 
then that's fine - I change one paragraph until I'm happy with it and 
then with a single click I can apply those changes to the whole 
document.

For instance, it just took me about 15 seconds to change the colour of 
the font & background in the command-line sections of the document. I 
kinda like that colour. http://stuff.stroller.uk.eu.org/Pages.jpeg

Within a style you can have as many character styles for "emphasis" or 
whatever as you like, so that if you apply a new style to the document 
it won't straighten those words you've italicised - unless you want it 
to, of course. Paragraph styles include definitions of alignment / 
justification, of line-spacing, of pre- and post-paragraph spacing and 
so on. Words formatted in "heading" and "sub-heading" (or any other) 
styles are automatically added to the document index.

It took me a hour or two to get used to Pages' way of working but now 
I'm really happy with it - I'm used to highlighting the whole document 
to change (say) to justified text and then having to go back & 
un-justify titles or other sections, and it's refreshing to have all 
this taken care of without having to think about it. I know that one 
can use styles within Word, and opening Word 2004 right now it seems 
much easier to do so now than last time I tried, perhaps 4 years ago, 
but it's generally not the way one _thinks_ of working within Word. My 
only issue with Pages is that I don't seem to be able to put a footer 
with a page number only on some pages - it leaps onto the title & 
contents pages, too, but either I'll work out how to fix that or Apple 
will in the next release. For this document it's not really very 
important & I'm just glad to be able to get on with my work & not to 
have to worry about it.

Stroller.