Fred, I am not pro microsoft or anti linux and dont have any allegiences to any camp. 12 years ago (scary how time flies) while writing up my MS thesis, I had a nightmare using a variety of the well known microsoft products and ended up doing some of my work on a mac.
4 years after that when it came time to write up my phd, I did an evaluation of latex and microsoft on a pc based platform on a microsoft OS. At that point it was no contest. I had major problems with latex, but no major issues with microsoft. In contrast, my computer science roomates who had access to their own unix based work stations pretty much all choose latex. It is possible that things are different today. In any case, word processing is a pretty generic application today and there is so much of good freeware out there that one wonders why anyone would want to pay for something like this irrespective of one's OS preference. With regards to the endless debate of microsoft vs. linux for mass/general use, it really does not matter what is better today. Microsoft has established such a persuasive stronghold on the market and such a massive captive base over the past 3 decades, I do not see any point in trying to fight it until the next disruptive technology comes along. This next new thing, will have to be significantly better or different to make the current installed base irrelevant. Coversely for newer apps such as web hosting, linux was initially signifcantly superior to the then existing windows plaforms resulting in it gaining a foothold that microsoft has failed to eliminate to this date. Market inertia can work both ways. Marlon --- "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Latex was great in the DOS and early Windows era > when the editing > > software and the underlying hardware (x86 based > PCs) were unable to > > handle the graphic rich and numerically intense > content that was > > utilized in typical technical theses.... Today the > issue of computing > > power is rarely an issue and even the lowest end/ > cheapest system is > > probably more than adequate for most users. > Likewise generic products > > by Microsoft and others are so rich in features > and are well entrenched > > in the system that it is almost pointless to use > anything else. > > Hi Marlon, I'm not sure your pro-Microsoft view and > suggestion that > Latex-is-outdated is on-target. Incidentally, I used > Lyx to format a > book, and, inspite of being a beginner, found it > really very helpful and > intelligent in its approach. > > See what Wikipedia explains (rather well put): > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX > > LaTeX is based on the idea that authors should be > able to concentrate on > writing within the logical structure of their > document, rather than > spending their time on the details of formatting. It > encourages the > separation of formatting from content, whilst still > allowing manual > typesetting adjustments where needed.
