RE: [seul-edu] Re: perl or......

[Chris Hedemark <hedemark@bops.com>]

Manuel,

First let me say that I don't find your language appropriate for this
mailing list.  The context of this mailing list is Linux in Education and
there are almost certainly students reading this.

With that in mind, I don't think it was very considerate either to say "If
your needs are the needs of a teenager boy trying to 
do his homework...".  Do not underestimate the needs or abilities of
"teenage boys".  One of our companies brightest and most productive software
engineers spends the first half of his day as a senior in high school and
his afternoons writing Voice Over IP code for BOPS.

I saw nothing of a legitimate debate in here so I will not address the
points that you made (or never got around to making, rather).  The "Linux
r00lZ, everything else sux" rhetoric is tiresome, unobjective, and
unproductive.  I can get my fill of that over at Slashdot.  Usually this
forum is largely devoid of such banal behavior and for that I am thankful.

-----Original Message-----
From: Manuel Gutierrez Algaba [mailto:algaba@gmx.net]
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 6:59 PM
To: 'seul-edu@seul.org'
Subject: RE: [seul-edu] Re: perl or......


On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Chris Hedemark wrote:
> > How well does Latex work for formatting entire books?
> 
> Argggh!  I starting writing a book using KLyX (the KDE front end to
Latex).
> Forget it.  I hate it. 

LyX IS NOT LaTeX/TeX.  LaTeX/TeX ***IS ___MUCH___ MORE 
THAN LyX***. Certainly, the learning curve is harder, but at the 
long term ( 1 year) it PAYS. Word sucks, people report :
- incompatible word documents from one version to the next.
- mismanagement of figures and graphics. 
- strange behaviour.

> I'd rather use MS Word (really!). 

You simply don't know what you're talking about. (really!)

> I've not been
> very impressed with any of the word processors I've seen on Linux yet
> compared to MS Word. 

Word processor ? what for ? A typesetting system is much more advanced.

> And I *have* written 200-300 page books in MS Word
> without difficulty.

>  It's actually pretty nice as it sets up your TOC,
> Index, footnotes, etc. all very easily and largely automatically.  Not
> tooting MS's horn here but just pointing out a big gaping hole that
possibly
> exists in Linux tools.

Ha, ha, ha :))) LaTeX is superb for automatical work. Specially
Tocs, footnotes, margin notes.... 
<Excuse me , I'm vomiting .... (Word reminds me  the all hard
experiences of life, the null pointer assignments, the 
automatical grammar speller  buaaaagggh)>

> 
> I've also offered to write documentation for Linux projects in the past
and
> quickly lost enthusiasm when I found the best tools for writing DocBook
> documents are emacs and vi. 

emacs is as powerful than, let's say: outlook, word, explorer,
calendar, calc, Visual Shit --.... all together.
Again you simply don't know what you're talking about.

> I want a WYSIWYG GUI 

Only fools prefer WYSIWYG over REAL typesetting systems.

>so I can see what my
> readers will see.  Anything else is a waste of time, IMHO.
> 

And, this is SEUL, that means that we don't need Microsoft lies.
Linux is far ahead in terms of _professional_ typesetting.

If your needs are the needs of a teenager boy trying to 
do his homework, you don't need a real computer, an old-fashioned
typewriter or an Amstrad 1512 would suffice.

For real work ( like real books) LaTeX excels!

-- 
Regards/Saludos
Manolo
www.ctv.es/USERS/irmina    /TeEncontreX.html   /texpython.htm
/pyttex.htm /cruo/cruolinux.htm ICQ:77697936 (sirve el ICQ para algo?)