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in reply to Regular Expressions in Perl: tutorial section (10 chapters) completed
This might not be a welcome comment but I feel it may be useful. I'm surprised you're using MS Word to write your manuscript. I consider Word to be a great program, but it is not a real, professional document-producing system. It is great for a small, quick documents but not for books.
I think LaTeX would be a better choice. It really produces amazing results, and it is used for real books, e.g. Applied Operating System Concepts. LaTeX documents can be easily converted to PostScript, PDF and HTML. I have written 100+ page documents with LaTeX, and the output is truly amazing.
As you're 2 thirds of the way through your book, I don't suppose this is of much help to you know.... but all would-be book authors take note! I'm attempting to write a book at the minute (nothing to do with Perl though) and LaTeX is what I'll be using. |
Re: Re: Regular Expressions in Perl: tutorial section (10 chapters) completed
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Aug 31, 2001 at 22:21 UTC
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The problem is, even with many (not all) publishers who do books about free software, there are so many in-house macros and templates that work with Word, it's hard not to force authors to use it. Of course, my book's written in DocBook Lite, using vim, but I'm weird that way, and have a couple of macros.
I knew a small poetry publisher that couldn't find any printing houses willing to do small runs in anything other than Word format. There were a lot of wasted cycles at that company, and I almost took a job there to convert things to a more useful format. Long story.
XML's nice for this sort of thing, because XSL can translate it into just about any other format. | [reply] |
Re: Re: Regular Expressions in Perl: tutorial section (10 chapters) completed
by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Aug 31, 2001 at 16:31 UTC
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Let's be honest here. Much as it pains me to say this, the world runs on Microsoft Office; call it the lingua franca of information interchange.
Perhaps Word isn't the best tool for the job, but it's usually good enough and you can bet the farm that whatever software the other party is using can import it, largely intact.
Sure, LaTeX could be the better choice. So was BetaMax, OS/9 (vs. Apple DOS & CP/M), and arguably, OS/2 (IBM's version, that is). But so it goes...
Just spouting off,
dmm
Just call me the Anti-Gates ...
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The popularity of LaTeX varies by field. In math and
physics it rules, and will continue to do so. In other
subjects it doesn't.
However where you want to use TeX or LaTeX is for any
documentation which you want to archive. Word is simply
a horrible choice for this. While it is a good bet that
people today can read Word, it is a bad bet that in 15
years someone who finds a Word document will know what
to do with it. However if you take a TeX document that
was written 15 years ago, it isn't that hard for a person
to read it in a text editor. Furthermore on the
operating system of your choice it is possible to take
the document and print it with the only difference from
the original being caused by the limitations of your
output format. (The output of TeX is specified down to
the visible wavelength of light.) In fact the odds are
extremely high that the program you would use 15 years
from now is exactly the same as the one that you would
use today. No matter what operating system you are
on. (TeX is the only widely used program that I know of
whose development has stopped. What people develop are
macro packages to use on top of the basic program. But
it has not been touched since March of 1995.)
There is no other document format which can make
equivalent claims. For instance PostScript cannot readily
be read as text, and the output is not even guaranteed to
remain the same from one printer to another. Microsoft
has problems correctly importing documents written 5 years
ago. There are many minor variations on groff out there,
and the toolset is not widely used outside of Unix.
It is to be hoped that tools like
LyX will make more people get into
TeX. But no matter what happens, there are niches which
it dominates today that it shows no signs of losing its
spot in for a very long time to come.
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Wow! Uncle!
I never meant to criticize TeX! Never used it myself (haven't needed to), but I have a healthy respect for it and those who have.
I guess I was just pointing out that the path of least resistance (e.g., Word) can be, er, a way to get the best bang for the buck (as it were).
In other words, if there is a learning curve to using TeX (e.g., it is new and unfamiliar), and Word is good enough to get the job done, maybe there's no real payoff in switching.
dmm
Just call me the Anti-Gates ...
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The idea that LaTeX belongs in the same set of superior technology that nobody uses as suggested by your examples would come as shocking news to the many publishers that wouldn't take any thing but! As long as your information exchange is nothing more than what can be done in simple typesetting terms, I suppose you could get by with Word, but as soon as you try and do anything outside of the narrow boundaries that the redmond developers conceived of, then you are seriously out of luck. Even with the
advances made since TeX was invented, Word just isn't in the same class.hsm
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Apologies. The tone of your response led me to re-read my post, and on reflection I understand how it might have seemed like a flame. This was not my intent at all.
In your message to which my post was a reply, you began with a rhetorical question concerning how welcome your subsequent comment expressing surprise at the use of MS Word would be. I was expressing my own surpise at your surprise.
Dismay? Yes, perhaps. Disappointment? Well, okay. But surprise? It seemed slightly stronger than seemed appropriate on an off-topic post, ...
dmm
Just call me the Anti-Gates ...
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