[X4U] Re: X4U Digest, Vol 13, Issue 23

[Herbert Schulz]

On Sep 9, 2005, at 8:56 AM, Randy Singer wrote:

> ...
>
>> There are several
>> pieces of software that handle Word doc just fine.
>>
>
> "Just fine" is a matter of perspective.  It's been a while, but I  
> tested
> all of the Mac word processors available on the market.  If you  
> exchange
> Word documents with any complex formatting at all in them, using  
> anything
> but Word means that you will often be very disappointed by how poor  
> the
> document looks when you open it.
>

Howdy,

I've seen real problems with the import of .doc files of any  
complexity by most every WP including Nisus Express, Appleworks and  
Mariner Write. Actually the best I've seen so far, at least for  
the .doc files I've imported, has been Pages.

> I haven't tested the latest versions of AbiWord and NeoOffice-J,  
> both of
> which use the same Word translators.  I understand that the translator
> for these word processors has been improved, but I would still be
> surprised to find that it has been improved to the point where having
> Word available to open Word format files is entirely unnecessary.
>

Haven't tried these either. I still like Excel for spread sheets so I  
keep my v.X Office around but don't use it very much.

> In any case, speaking only for myself, I don't use Word simply  
> because it
> is good at opening Word files.  I use Word because it is currently the
> only high-end word processor available for the Mac.  With the  
> passing of
> WordPerfect/Mac and with Adobe failing to port FrameMaker to OS X,  
> Word
> has no competition in its class on the Mac.  Nothing else on the Mac
> comes close to Word's capabilities.  (Which is not to denegrate anyone
> else's favorite word processor.  It's just that none of them are  
> high-end
> products in the same class as Word.  But if something else meets your
> personal needs and you are happy with it, that's great.)
>
>

Interesting... What are your requirements for a ``high-end word  
processor?''

I spent many years on several Operating Systems using TeX and LaTeX  
for technical documents. When I came back to Apple (started with an  
Apple II and came back to a Mac Quadra) I used Textures for a while  
and then shifted to FrameMaker. I created several Style sheets for  
FrameMaker and really liked it but it was clear, after Adobe bought  
it, that the Mac version was no longer going to be updated and an OS  
X version would never appear; it's pretty clear that Adobe just  
wanted to kill it off on Mac and even other platforms.

I tried Word v.X and went through one of the most frustrating periods  
I remember. Creating Style sheets seemed nearly impossible. There  
seems to be multiple, non-interacting ways of doing things and you've  
got to get them all independently changed and even then, all of a  
sudden, formatting would revert back to the default Word behavior. I  
gave up on Word and went back to, and have been using almost  
exclusively, LaTeX again.

With the TeXShop front end to a wonderfully complete TeX installation  
based on teTeX+TeXLive, to using BibDesk for bibliography  
compilation, LaTeXiT for creating text and equations to be included  
in diagrams and figures created with Stone Create, OmniGraffle, etc.,  
it is a joy to use. Oh, TeXShop, the TeX distribution, BibDesk and  
LaTeXiT are free too.

Does LaTeX have a learning curve? Yes, but there is lots of free help  
on line and really good books for beginners and experts alike. Do you  
have to get used to creating mark-up code and then typesetting it  
rather than the WYSISWYG (What You See is Sort of What You Get)? Yes,  
but the quality of the typesetting and table-of-contents, and  
footnotes/endnotes, and bibliography, and indexes, etc., is  
outstanding out of the box. Does it take some skill to change the  
default formats? Yes, but now there are some nice packages that make  
it simpler and the default formats are very nice and minor tweaks can  
be learned fairly quickly. For a more WYSIWYG front end you might try  
Lyx which will still need the TeX distribution.

Certainly not a perfect solution but, in the end, a whole lot less  
frustrating and much more beautiful, than trying to bend Word to your  
needs.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz