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MS Word 2010 Takes On TeX
alphabetsoup writes "Office 2010 Technology preview was leaked a few days back. With its leak, a feature which was rumored to be present can now be confirmed. Office 2010 finally adds support for Advanced Typographic features (ligatures, number forms, alternates, etc.) of OpenType, allowing one to create documents so far possible only in TeX or InDesign. Between this, the new equation editor and styles, what are the chances of Word replacing LaTeX as the editor of choice in academia?"
Something usually free is already widely used.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
If Word 2010 does this extremely well, perhaps they deserve to become the editor of choice.
How well does OpenOffice.org do this?
The guys who need this stuff are already geeky, and why would geeky guys use something "for pay" that comes out of a budget? And since this will be in a proprietary format, why would they risk these documents becoming unreadable?
I use LaTeX not only for its nice typographic properties, but because of how flexible it is. It's trivial to generate LaTeX code for automatically generating documentation, for instance. LaTeX may still be ahead in a couple areas (e.g., citations. Does Word beat out BibTeX yet?), but I'm not sure. As long as Word is GUI-based, I can't see it ever being anywhere near as flexible as LaTeX is.
This is still very cool though. I hate seeing flyers and menus and then that scream from 20 feet away "I WAS MADE IN WORD! MY TYPOGRAPHY WILL BURN YOUR EYES!" Anything that improves the quality of print around me is a good thing, I say.
So it can do something LaTex so what? It can also do HTML but I don't see Adobe or any other web writing tool throwing in the towel.
The big question is can it write it effectively. Word already has the tendency of turning a basic document into a code of spaghetti when saved as HTML. Somehow I don't see this being any different
There is not a question about Word taking over from LaTeX in academia since Word already dominates academia.
In most disciplines in academia (all of the humanities and social sciences for example) no one has heard of TeX or LaTeX, and people mostly don't have the technical skills to use either program easily. And they are _already_ all using Word.
By contrast, in mathematics and other disciplines where LaTeX is a good solution, it is very hard to imagine something as clunky, bug prone, bloated and hard to use as Word taking over from something robust and easy to use (if you think the way mathematicians think) like LaTeX.
In earth science one gets the whole culture clash between the hard-core physics/computer types who like LaTeX and the biologist/ecologist types who like Word. I get a little depressed by the extent to which Word seems to be replacing LaTeX, especially given how much less nice the final result looks. If MS can really improve the typesetting then the "Not a chance" posts above are likely to prove wrong once Word 2010 becomes prevalent.
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TeX won't be replaced by Word because TeX's whole purpose is to provide a way to separate content and layout. Publishers care about this because the same content can be reshaped to fit their typesetting needs. Word is by its very nature a WYSIWYG. Why would publishers leave established infrastructure and a seamless way of assuring documents meet their typesetting needs to trust layout to amateurs and receive files which must be manually edited in order to modify layout?
Office will take over from TeX when (at the least)
* It works on Linux (which lots of academics use.
* It works well with version control, making it easy to merge edits made by different people
* It is easy to generate tables from scripts and glue them into the document
* It is easy to take a pre-written document and put it in a new style.
Now, it's possible Office already does a few of those, and it's also very possible TeX does an awful lot more than that.
The cost isn't really that much of an issue for academics, as every university tends to have a site-licence for Office and other apps. Despite this, I still never use it.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I'd say the odds of MS Word replacing LaTeX are about the same as Microsoft releasing the source to Word so we can fix problems and add features as we need them.
A lot of these open source projects grew out of a direct need. There was a vacuum to be filled. The need shaped what the product wound up being. Trying to pound the square peg of MS Word into the round hole LaTeX fills is most likely impossible.
Support or not, they're just too different.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Some of the folks using TeX are also owners of Mathematica, IDL and other software that costs thousands of dollars per license -- because it increases their productivity.
It's not an issue of cost, it's an issue of the benefit for the cost -- and I don't think there will be the benefit unless MS Word decouples the content from the presentation. (which allows the TeX users to write their paper once, and then have it formatted correctly for whatever journal it'll be published in) As for becoming unreadable -- so long as you can export it to PDF, Post Script, or whatever, you're fine for archiving.
And would MS Word replace InDesign? I don't think so, but if they've got this support in MS Word, I can only assume they'll bring it over to MS Publisher, and they might be able to pick up some users.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
You've obviously never used TROFF or its kin.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Right. The difference being that Word doesn't always truly separate content from presentation, nor does it enforce any separation of content from presentation.
IOW, TeX is like making a webpage using HTML 4 strict with a text editor, and Word is like making a webpage in Microsoft FrontPage.
My blog
As a user of LyX, I generally agree. However, it still is in need of improvement in a variety of areas. In particular, if you have to prepare a document that needs to be formatted in a very specific way, you better hope for one of the following:
1) the format is simple, so not much work involved in setting it up.
2) one of the default templates/options gives you what you need (optionally append #1 here for variations if needed)
3) you've been provided a template (I wish...but very unlikely).
4) you are a wizard at TeX/LaTeX/LyX, and/or you can become one (RTFM, Google, etc.).
Option #4 is available to everyone with the learning capacity, inclination, and time to spend on it. Personally, I'm lacking somewhat in at least the latter two categories (and perhaps the former as well, as I've found setting up/configuring documents in LyX to be ridiculously frustrating). I've started using LaTeX recently, but only because I could only find a template for what I needed in only that format, and unfortunately importing/exporting LaTeX is not an option (it tends to get things pretty messed up).
I think it means exactly what he think it means. I think that what you mean is it is much harder to learn.
AccountKiller
People have little care or concern over what results are deemed "professional".
There are entire books and manuals that aren't made with the "proper" tools, because most people can't comprehend why Word or Publisher don't meet the criteria for "professional" results. With Publisher, it usually takes the harsh step of producing their document, from the raw material delivered by the customer.
"It looks fine on my Inkjet at home! Why does it look like so much dogshit on the floor?"
With Word, it's usually "good enough" for most people, even though the outcome isn't what you or they would really like. Give a Tech Writer a copy of Word, and they may "make-do", but I doubt you'll find many who prefer it to FrameMaker, InDesign, or even Pagemaker. That same Tech Writer will churn out a document with Word, and because it's "good enough", it will fly around the Globe, and even make it out as trade conference detritus or long-lived corporate gospel.
TeX, on the other hand, is not something most people care about learning. You *must* learn it to be able to use it confidently. There's no "good enough" with TeX - it either works, or it doesn't.
TeX is a Science. Word is a Comedy. People like comedy.
Phew - the shit I have seen crammed into a spreadsheet.. With pride.
Any higher function than SUM should require certification.
"You got a license for that Pivot Table, Son?"
Features on top of features, with no real signposts to guide their implementation. Gag.
...I work at the Economics Research Institute at UNAM, Mexico's (and Latin America's) largest university. Researchers here are social scientists â" Their texts do include the ocassional formula, yes, but they mainly deal with straight text. Even so, I am painfully aware on how inconvenient a word-processor-minded program can be for them (i.e. try to get them to distinguish between cosmetic and semantic tagging â" No way). They literally use the computer as a fancy typewriter.
I have shown LyX to a couple of people, and are initially interested, even more looking at the quality of the results... But after I mention it cannot import (with formatting) Word documents, and that they won't be able to share their works (except as an unmodifiable PDF) with other colleagues, they go back to what they already know.
So, no, TeX is not necessarily widely used in all of academia. Just in the portion we, the computer-minded geeks, like looking at.
so it costs the most precious thing of all?
To use any word processor to create "good" (for some definitions of "good") quality documents with proper structuring, it takes time to learn. Personally, I've probably wasted more time fighting MS Word's formatting (e.g., arbitrary bullet indentation changes, anyone?) over the years than the time it took me to learn enough LaTeX to be happy and productive.
Open Source: I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
So I've got a $BIGNUM of screws to screw in and I could use either a screwdriver or a power tool, which I don't know how to use yet.
Clearly the screwdriver is the superior option, because I have better things to do than wasting my time learning tools.