On Sun, 19 Jun 2005, Henning Hraban Ramm wrote: > Am 18.06.2005 um 18:06 schrieb Peter Münster: > > > With this experience I'm quite sure, that ConTeXt is much easier to > > use > > for a thesis, than MS-Word. After about 4 or 5 days reading the > > Don't know if it's easier (for a programmer, sure), but much more > reliable -
Hello Hraban, imagine someone with a one week Word-experience producing a document with 200 pages, dozens of citations, figures and so on. I can hardly believe, that the result would be similar to a ConTeXt-document. About 3 years ago, my fellow students wrote their thesis with Word, each chapter in one file. At the end they lived about 10 days of night-mares because of wrong figure placements, problems with the bibliography and so on. I didn't try it myself, but it seemed to me very very difficult, and they spent a lot of time with these problems. > MSW is famous for destroying huge works like books or theses. I can confirm. My fellow students had also such problems. > > None of my colleagues, even those with several years of experience > > with > > MS-Word, is able to do that. > > It *is* possible if you know how and are very careful (split the text in > chapters, safe and backup often etc.), Of course it's possible, but the question is, with how much effort? > > Another important thing: *only* MS-Word can read your Word- > > document, and of > > course only the right version (M$ won't guarantee, that Word-2005 > > prints > > out your document the same way as Word-2000). > > That's not true since about Word 98; and there are a lot of other word > processors that can import MSW-Docs (e.g. OOo again). It's in the details. At my job I have to read each day some Word-documents, and I open them always at first with OOo. But often, I have to start a M$-system, because of wrong fonts, wrong figures and other problems with OOo. And unfortunately, it's still true, that different Word-versions print out the pages differently: sometimes I find a section title on another page, than the guy, who wrote the document and other things. It's quite possible, that working with OOo is more pleasant, than working with M$-Word. But when speaking only about M$-Word: the only guys I know, who are happy with Word, have never known anything else. So, for the original poster, Alex: if you want to compare Word with ConTeXt, then count the people who have switched from Word to ConTeXt without regrets, and those who have switched from ConTeXt to Word (if you find them...). This is one reason, why I've switched from LaTeX to ConTeXt: I found a lot of people, who have switched the same direction, but nobody the opposite way. Of course, Hraban is right: OOo could be an alternative for you. Cheers, Peter -- http://pmrb.free.fr/contact/ _______________________________________________ ntg-context mailing list ntg-context@ntg.nl http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
