From: arie@eecs.umich.edu (Arie Covrigaru)
Subject: Re: Mac Disertation Word Processor
Reply-To: arie@eecs.umich.edu
Organization: AI Lab, The University of Michigan
Distribution: comp
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 20:57:53 GMT

>>>>> On 4 Jan 93 19:06:42 GMT, segall+@cs.cmu.edu (Edward Segall) said:
| Article-I.D.: cs.C0CFrB.np.1
| Nntp-Posting-Host: n3.sp.cs.cmu.edu

| brianj@bedrock.cs.umd.edu (Brian Johnson) writes:

|>I'd like to hear some opinions about word processors for large
|>projects (my dissertation).

|>I have a Macintosh at home and at school, as well as access to UNIX.
|>I prefer not to use latex.

|>Latex		Nasty for images.

|>MacWrite	No support for multi-piece projects.

|>Microsoft Word	Minimal support for multi-piece projects
|>		ok references with WordRef
|>		good tables, list generation
|>		good for figures

|>WordPerfect	Nice, clean looking interface
|>		multi-piece projects with publish and subscribe?
|>		table and list generation
|>		automatic figure numbering and cross references
|>		support for bibliographic references???

|>I have not tried any others

|>Is Nisus the way to go?  I am still a poor grad student working on his
|>dissertation so money is a factor, but so is time.  I wnat to
|>concentrate on writing - not tables, figure numbering, citations, etc.

|>Thanks for any feedback.  Any pleasant dissertation writing tales out
|>there?

| Here's an unpleasant dissertation writing tale.  MS Word sucks for
| doing a dissertation.  Maybe 5.1 is better, but I found a half-dozen
| confirmed bugs in 5.0 that stopped me cold.  I ain't stupid, but for
| that and many other reasons, I averaged about 2 calls/week to MS tech
| support over the course of about 8 months.  

| Why all this trouble?  First, as with every complex system, Word has
| many ways to do things.  Therefore, when doing a document as large and
| complex as a dissertation, if you don't have prior experience with the
| application, you are going to organize things the wrong way sometimes,
| and have to reorganize them, possibly several times.  Second, as a
| technical person, I tried to actually use many of Word's more advanced
| features.  But certain features, like OLE and publish/subscribe, were
| meant to have limited use, so that slow speed and fixing Word's
| screwups would not be problems.  Not true if you use them extensively.
| There are many other reasons to list, but it's not worth the time and
| effort.

| I am currently learning Framemaker, which I would not originally
| consider, due to its cost.  But the time I lost by working on Word's
| screwups would have paid that cost many times over in lost wages
| (since I didn't start working till I defended the dissertation).

| My advice: Check out framemaker. Biggest benefit: Cross-platform
| compatibility (except Mac figures, but you can use Framemaker's figure
| editor to work around that).


| --Ed

I used MS word for large manuscripts that included figures, tables,
formulae and imported EPS. In putting a manuscript together I made
use of Word's links, table generation, publish and subscribe (I
subscribed to charts generated by MS Excel) and TOC (table of contents)
generation. I was able to have all my text and graphics manipulated
with Word's styles and made use of Word's integrated outlining
features, which I find much improved in the latest versions of Word.
I recommend MS Word for writing a dissertation on a Macintosh computer,
unless it must be portable and editable in other platforms. I have
seen dissertations written in MS Word in computer science and 
mathematics and they looked as good as any other LaTeX processed 
manuscripts.
--


Arie.

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| Arie Covrigaru                 |  University of Michigan AI Lab       |
| Phone: (313)994-8887           |  Room 149, Advanced Technology Bldg. |
| Internet: arie@eecs.umich.edu  |  1101 Beal Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 |
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