On Wednesday 29 November 2006 13:01, Juergen Fenn wrote: > Sven Schreiber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> I don't think this is a good idea. If you are supposed to provide MS > >> Word format you should use MS Word or at least OOo for writing your > >> paper. The point is that the TeX community has spent too little effort > >> on converters. > > > > "That's a bold statement." (To quote a popular movie, IIRC.) Seriously, > > although it's correct that especially between Latex and the Open Doc > > Format better converters are needed, I don't think your advice is wise, > > especially for people who are familiar and productive with Lyx. Btw, > > what advice did you give before OOo existed? Everybody should buy (or > > crack) msword? > > I gave the same advice earlier. It doesn't matter whether you use a > wordprocessor other than MS Word or LaTeX directly or LyX. It's all > the same: If you know you are required to provide a DOC file for > submission to a journal then use Word and produce a DOC file of your > paper. Even OOo is second choice because it is not the > original. Everything else amounts to Cervantes' fight against > wind-mills... >
If you always have to provide a doc file and it's not a budget issue to buy windows and office than yes, you should use word. On the other hand, as the OP wrote, at the time of writing he doesn't know which paper he is going to submit to, one wants word, the rest take latex, and in such a case using word in the first place is not an option. Also, writing mathematics in word is one of the worst experiences ever, and by itself can cause a partially sane person to drop math all together and move to studying english literature ... > Converting LaTeX to DOC is a nice idea and tex4ht certainly is a great > tool. But converting is always second choice to the original. I think > we have to say this to everyone clearly who is interested in writing > in LaTeX, but who already knows that he finally has to provide a DOC > file to someone else. > If your field requires mainly latex and then comes the odd ball that wants doc, it's better to find a partially working solution instead of breaking your head each time writing everything twice. > The main problem in scientific environments is that both LaTeX and > HTML are long-term archiving formats which DOC clearly isn't. So most > information stored in DOC format will vanish some day. But that's not > the point publishing houses have taken up so far... > doc can be archived and microsoft based version control systems can even handle it directly (if you are willing to pay several 100K for a piece of junk version control system ...) > Regards, > Jürgen. > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC.
