Re: Document Prep using Linux (fwd)

[XRDLAB <mysxrd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Just to add some of my comments.

>As far as I know there are no MS-Word (or MS-*) converters for TeX or
>LaTeX.  I'd be glad to be proven wrong on this!

tex2rtf (or rtf2tex) does the job. How effectively, I do not know as I
have not tried it. Reason: I am addicted to LaTeX and very rarely
invoke Word (in case someone sends me a file).

>Finally, my personal opinion: while the learning curve for getting to
>use TeX/LaTeX effectively is pretty steep, 

I do not think it is really steep. In fact, to get a good looking
document using LaTeX is much easier than in anything else.

>....package and the incredible quality of the final outp
>long ago that it was the ultimate document preparation tool.  You can
>actually format the same text using any other tool (e.g. MS-Word) and
>TeX and compare the printouts on the same printer, and you will see
>what I mean.
>
No doubt about that. In case someone is into maths,
typesetting equations is very easy with TeX. Spacing and kerning are
two aspects which are strong points of TeX. Add to this a wonderful
hyphenation scheme (one can define how to hyphenate words not known to
the system), you have the best document processor. In fact, many of
the scientific journals are typeset using TeX/LaTeX. 

One more comment, typeset 100 equations in Word and you have a very
huge file. TeX files being textfiles very rarely reach that
size. In our department, we have 300 page theses typeset using LaTeX
which occupy some 300KB (tex files). 

Regarding Word or any other WYSIWYG, to quote from LaTeX Book,

  What you see is all you've got.

sridhar


********************************************
Dr. Sridhar M. A.
Department of Physics
University of Mysore, Manasagangotri
Mysore 570 006, INDIA

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