From: varmint@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Samir Varma)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Release dates ( was Re: superVGA (and misc top-blowing)
Date: 18 Aug 92 05:20:42 GMT
Organization: Center for Particle Physics, University of Texas

In article <1992Aug15.235739.10958@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:

>I am a touch typist, I used ditroff for many years.  I did my master
>thesis in TeX.  I'm well aware of the differences between it and
>say Word for Windows.  With the possible exception of papers of
>mathematicians or near mathematicians, TeX is simply and clearly
>inferior.  Word Basic (the underlying macro language of Word) is
>every bit as powerful as GNU emacs's e-lisp.
>My guess is that, sure you tried it, but you never really spent as
>much time learning it as you did for TeX.
>
>Were I to do something the size of my thesis again, I would undoubtedly 
>use Word, Ami Pro, or Word Perfect over TeX.
>
>
>>
>>I suggest that you don't cast aspersions on those who don't make the same
>>choices as you---who knows, they might even know a thing or two.
>I did not cast aspersions on them (though I do on you)... the people
>I know that says those things HAVEN'T looked.  They don't want to because
>they don't want to fool with learning something new, and the other stuff
>gets the job done... their choice.
>
>
>The only reason a mathematician would not want to use Word is that
>drawing equations is fine for a few of them, but if you're doing
>many of them, it is too tedious.  WordPerfect however allows you
>to use a TeX-like approach, though it's not quite as good as TeX.
>>
>>Samir Varma
>
>Brian

Well, apart from the slightly strident tone of my posting, for which I 
offer a mild apology ;)  I must continue to disagree with you.  I've used
Word 2.0 and 1.1 extensively and Ami Pro 2.0 reasonably extensively as
well.  Let me once again say, in the strongest possible terms, that
they're considerably less efficient for getting the job done than using
TeX.  I use a very good canned package called TeXsis, TeX macros for
physicists, and it simply blows the pants off any of these word
processors.  

As for including pictures, it's not too difficult in TeX, once you get the
hang of it.  Any postscript picture (as I'm sure you know) can be sized
to whatever size you need and placed wherever you like.  It doesn't take
me much more than one or two tries to get it right.  As for typing equations,
there is simply no comparison.  In TeX, I simply type away without ever
worrying about mice, pull down menus, or where the damned square root
sign is in the menu.  It's easy, its fast and its convenient to simply
say \sqrt{.....} than to worry about where to find the damned thing, and
even once you know, you still need to take your hands off the keyboard.
I like writing my papers as I go along, not worrying about the format.

Finally, the reason for my rather strident tone is that you claimed
that people who disagreed with you were simply not willing to
investigate the "so called" powerful WYSIWYG word processors.  I would
suggest, as I did before, that different people will find different 
ways of word-processing more efficiently, and just because you can't see
why they chose what they did, that doesn't mean that they're blind sheep
who need to be led.

Samir Varma
PS:  Another problem with WYSIWYG word processors is that I can't change
paper formats with one small change.  Ie, I might write my paper in physrev
format, double column, but then decide to submit it to North Holland in
single column format.  For me, that involves changing \physrev to
\elsevier and re running TeX.  Can't do that with Word now can you?