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Google "Office" Released
pumpknhd writes "Looks like Google has finally integrated Writely and spreadsheets into Google "Docs & Spreadsheets". Writely.com now redirects to this new location. The design has also changed to match the look of other Google services." The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a Mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my Dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frustrate me as I find myself wanting to use more web2.0 ajaxy fancy pants programs.
Woah, wildly speculative, I really *really* like the name "Windows Vienna" though.
Global warming is a cube.
LaTeX with an appropriate front-end is no less a word processor than the tools that are marketted as "word processors".
I'd actually argue that setup is generally more of a layout program with some word processing features. MS Word is not intended for exacting layout, LaTeX is. If you want exacting layout, you should compare LaTeX to tools designed to do that.
True, though MS Word is the WYSIWYG program most commonly used, you can compare it MS Word and conclude you've done a comparison to the most important WYSIWYG program that people use.
Ahh, but LaTeX is not the most common markup tool used. You can compare MS Word and OpenOffice Writer because they are designed for the same thing. LaTeX was designed to layout books. MSWord was not. Comparing it to Framemaker or Quark or InDesign is a lot more appropriate. And if you're trying to compare the advantages of WYSIWYG versus markup, then you have to take into account more than the most common and instead look at the best implementations of each.
That may be certainly the case, OTOH, the price tag of InDesign means that in most environments, "most users" aren't going to have InDesign available.
Most users are incapable of finding and installing a LaTeX environment.
Of course, a hybrid product, well-designed, can naturally, have the strengths of both WYSIWYG and markup-based systems, and so its superiority doesn't really say anything about the relative utility of the two models.
I thought it was obvious that both are better for different tasks, which is why such a discussion is useless unless you have specific tasks in mind. I just get annoyed when someone goes off about their favorite and how much better it is than everything else, despite obviously having not tried a lot of the options in the field. LaTeX is quite simply painful for certain tasks, especially for graphics because graphics do not fit well into the markup model. So when someone says something about how you can't position graphics well using a WYSIWYG, I get a little irate.