[Hidden-tech] Microsoft Office suite vs. other options

[Don Lesser]

I wrote a good deal of documentation in TeX and LaTeX and I appreciated the 
programmability of the two. I wrote one manual for 14 different 
microprocessors that needed only the name of the processor on the command 
line to produce the customized manual. 

However, I quote Donald Knuth (from memory) regarding getting TeX to 
properly format a page: "If all else fails, there is no document that 
cannot be improved by rewriting." 

A playwright I read in the 1980's said that after she started using a word 
processor, she realized that she normally rewrote scenes to fit on the same 
typewritten page to avoid retyping the entire play. Truman Capote said of 
Jack Kerouac, "That's not writing. That's typewriting."

I also used troff and nroff. troff was designed by Joseph Osanna in the mid 
70's I believe. He left it largely undocumented and then died in a 
motorcycle accident. nroff was good and supplied with macro packages like 
LaTeX. Of course, when I went to the me macro file to look into modifying 
it, the comment at the top of the file read "Comments have been removed to 
save space. If you need them, see me. Neal" I briefly envisoned called SUN 
or UC Berkeley Computer Dept to ask for Neal before I abandoned them in 
favor of TeX, whose documentation was available but was apparently written 
by Lewis Carroll.

And yes, Word is buggy as sh*t and whoever came up the data structures they 
use for numbered/bulleted lists should be brought to trial in the Hague. 
Framemaker seems to be the program of choice for professionals, but you're 
not going to get businesses to use it. 

In Shakespeare's time, spelling your name in different ways was considered 
a mark of intelligence. Do IM and texting acronyms mean the same thing?

Perhaps if we required writers to illuminate their manuscripts like 
Medieval  monks, they might take more care about spewing forth junk. On the 
other hand, they might spend more time on twining vines and angels than 
syntax and content.

My point is that your available technology determines your communication 
and that quality is still in the hands of the human.
If we taught people how to think and how to communicate, their tools would 
matter less. 

----------------------------------------

From: "Roger Williams" <roger at qux.com>
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 6:16 PM
To: "Robert Heller" <heller at deepsoft.com>
Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] Microsoft Office suite vs. other options 

** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
** If you did, we all thank you.

>>>>> Robert Heller writes:

> "Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient":
> http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

I wholeheartedly agree with Allin Cottrell (and Donald Knuth) on the
distinctions between composition versus typesetting and structured 
documents.
I've written hundreds of technical papers in LaTeX. (I still use XEmacs 
for
well over half of my computer interaction.)

However, on the whole I've found it more productive to produce graphics-
intensive technical papers using structured Framemaker, i.e. NO on-the-fly
formatting whatsoever.

-- 
Roger Williams 
Chief Technical Officer, Qux Corporation
433 West Street, Suite 8, Amherst, MA 01002, USA
Tel +1 413 253-6400 * Fax +1 508 302-0230 * GSM +1 508 287-1420
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