You may not know about "real publishers" and you may be guessing, but what you've described (outside of the graphics handling) is pretty much how it is. Even at my work (tech writer) the developers give me stuff in Word, which I turn around and put into FrameMaker (or InDesign, if it's going out to customers) and RoboHelp. The only reason Word is in the equation is that's what the developer has sitting on his desktop from his office suite.
Because companies don't care about a few hundred dollars up front. ROI and COO are more important to them, as are other intangibles, such as productivity, artists' preferences, aesthetics, etc. To come to slashdot and say a professional video editing agency is crazy to spend $600 more on a Mac instead of a generic brand PC is ignorant, at best.
My point is, you don't have to know a thing about professional publishing. Use Word, send it to a publisher, who then turns around and typesets it with professional tools. This is how Word is not used in publishing--yes, the authors most likely use Word to create their manuscripts, but the publisher only uses that content to fill into a professional tool to be printed.
You are assuming that surfing the web without antivirus software is just as dangerous (or more) than driving a car. Perhaps our geek-centric view has clouded our judgment, but the reason we require driver's licenses and vision tests is because you can kill somebody with a car. My computer-as-net-bot doesn't even rate on the serious scale, in comparison.
1-yes, you can tell, 2-depends on the content. But, if something isn't thoughtfully laid out and professionally printed, the question is, 3- will anybody stop long enough to see if your material is worth reading?
I love the dismissive "anecdotal" defense that every Windows user who just wasted half their day fiddling with Windows settings reverts to. When something becomes common place, not only does it not require citation, it is no longer considered "anecdotal".
Ooh ooh, my anecdote. Premiere on my Dell at work wasn't working and nobody in IT could figure it out. Reinstalled, fixed. Now Canon HD DV camera not recognized, nobody in IT can figure it out...take camera home and edit on a 9-year old G4 Mac instead. Done (and done with video editing on Windows).
Maybe YOU care about the imaginary price premium, but a corporation that actually makes money off the tools they choose to use doesn't really care about a few hundred bucks.
There are already enough idiots driving distracted with hands-free (and not hands-free) devices out there. I'd love to be cut off by some self-important jerk checking his email while wearing one of these devices.
I know this isn't popular, but maybe it's to stop malicious code? Instead of dumping Windows and starting over from scratch, it seems they are looking for an expedient way to shore up their OS while preserving all the legacy garbage they still support? And before you freak out, no, I don't think this is a good idea at all--I was just offering an alternative interpretation of why anybody would apply for such a patent.
Sorry, you are simply wrong on #3. I shouldn't have to bog down my system with unneeded complexity to prevent evil-doers from infecting my system (and, by association, yours as well). Go after the anti-social losers who come up with the malicious code--not my 70 year old parents who don't know the difference between a bit and a byte.
So whoever wrote the summary was just trying to provoke controversy by making it "new Microsoft features" versus "Free software", and then watching the predictable flame war.
+500 "Best Post Ever".
Re:Much more than you think leaves Word & Co.
on
MS Word 2010 Takes On TeX
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Do the "Dummies" books take the style-sheets in Word format all the way to print, or do they use the style sheets to populate layout in something like InDesign? It would make sense to give a style sheet to a contributor who might not know the first thing about typography and layout.
Well, more power to the Walmart crowd then. I'm pretty sure, however, that every book and magazine for sale at Walmart has been professionally type-set and laid out with something OTHER than Microsoft Word.
There are entire books and manuals that aren't made with the "proper" tools,
There aren't entire books that are PUBLISHED using Word and other, non-professional typesetting tools. You can't type up 50 pages and staple them together and say, "see, this book wasn't made in InDesign!"
And not using "proper" publishing tools only makes your manuals look amateur. All things being equal, I gladly shop with the people who took a little time to do the small things right.
VR and voice recognition are right on. As an Education Technologist, I STILL hear uninformed teachers referring to things on the computer as "virtual reality". It's not VR, and even if it were, VR sucks. Voice recognition is a huge steamy joke as well. Every day I fire up Dragon Naturally Speaking and fire off a funny-ass email to my wife. It's never even close, even though we have a pretty high quality microphone, in a sound-production room, and I've been training the stupid software for over 6 months.
I'm not sure Lisa could be considered a failure either, since it was the direct descendent of the original Macintosh.
Hey, cool! Thanks! I wish more users on here were as cordial. I love car analogies, because I love cars and most people on slashdot have no passion for cars, so it makes for good arguments!
(1) A car without a stereo is not feature-complete. A consumer OS without a browser is not feature-complete
(5) Nobody buys a car based on the built-in stereo and even if a car didn't have a stereo, that wouldn't stop anybody from buying a car they really wanted in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
You may not know about "real publishers" and you may be guessing, but what you've described (outside of the graphics handling) is pretty much how it is. Even at my work (tech writer) the developers give me stuff in Word, which I turn around and put into FrameMaker (or InDesign, if it's going out to customers) and RoboHelp. The only reason Word is in the equation is that's what the developer has sitting on his desktop from his office suite.
Because companies don't care about a few hundred dollars up front. ROI and COO are more important to them, as are other intangibles, such as productivity, artists' preferences, aesthetics, etc. To come to slashdot and say a professional video editing agency is crazy to spend $600 more on a Mac instead of a generic brand PC is ignorant, at best.
My point is, you don't have to know a thing about professional publishing. Use Word, send it to a publisher, who then turns around and typesets it with professional tools. This is how Word is not used in publishing--yes, the authors most likely use Word to create their manuscripts, but the publisher only uses that content to fill into a professional tool to be printed.
Yes, but did the publisher take your mother's type written word document and publish it "as is" or did they turn around and properly typeset it?
You are assuming that surfing the web without antivirus software is just as dangerous (or more) than driving a car. Perhaps our geek-centric view has clouded our judgment, but the reason we require driver's licenses and vision tests is because you can kill somebody with a car. My computer-as-net-bot doesn't even rate on the serious scale, in comparison.
1-yes, you can tell, 2-depends on the content. But, if something isn't thoughtfully laid out and professionally printed, the question is, 3- will anybody stop long enough to see if your material is worth reading?
Isn't pointing to Avid in 2009 kind of like saying, "hey check out my 1976 Porsche 914" in 2009 when talking about cutting edge sports cars?
I love the dismissive "anecdotal" defense that every Windows user who just wasted half their day fiddling with Windows settings reverts to. When something becomes common place, not only does it not require citation, it is no longer considered "anecdotal".
Ooh ooh, my anecdote. Premiere on my Dell at work wasn't working and nobody in IT could figure it out. Reinstalled, fixed. Now Canon HD DV camera not recognized, nobody in IT can figure it out...take camera home and edit on a 9-year old G4 Mac instead. Done (and done with video editing on Windows).
You think a guy going on an 18-month video trek wouldn't have enough "money to buy macs"?
Maybe YOU care about the imaginary price premium, but a corporation that actually makes money off the tools they choose to use doesn't really care about a few hundred bucks.
How did anyone stupid enough to mod this "funny" ever get mod points?
But...the OP said "no video editing".
I thought that was odd. Who goes 18 months on a video documentary trip and doesn't have a need to edit video?
There are already enough idiots driving distracted with hands-free (and not hands-free) devices out there. I'd love to be cut off by some self-important jerk checking his email while wearing one of these devices.
I know this isn't popular, but maybe it's to stop malicious code? Instead of dumping Windows and starting over from scratch, it seems they are looking for an expedient way to shore up their OS while preserving all the legacy garbage they still support? And before you freak out, no, I don't think this is a good idea at all--I was just offering an alternative interpretation of why anybody would apply for such a patent.
Sorry, you are simply wrong on #3. I shouldn't have to bog down my system with unneeded complexity to prevent evil-doers from infecting my system (and, by association, yours as well). Go after the anti-social losers who come up with the malicious code--not my 70 year old parents who don't know the difference between a bit and a byte.
So whoever wrote the summary was just trying to provoke controversy by making it "new Microsoft features" versus "Free software", and then watching the predictable flame war.
+500 "Best Post Ever".
Do the "Dummies" books take the style-sheets in Word format all the way to print, or do they use the style sheets to populate layout in something like InDesign? It would make sense to give a style sheet to a contributor who might not know the first thing about typography and layout.
Well, more power to the Walmart crowd then. I'm pretty sure, however, that every book and magazine for sale at Walmart has been professionally type-set and laid out with something OTHER than Microsoft Word.
(MS Word) allows non technical people to create documents that are quite stunning ...
MS Word doesn't allow for design experts to create "stunning" documents, so that would be a neat trick!
There are entire books and manuals that aren't made with the "proper" tools,
There aren't entire books that are PUBLISHED using Word and other, non-professional typesetting tools. You can't type up 50 pages and staple them together and say, "see, this book wasn't made in InDesign!"
And not using "proper" publishing tools only makes your manuals look amateur. All things being equal, I gladly shop with the people who took a little time to do the small things right.
Except I've never even heard of TeX. It's hard to use something that is free if you don't know it exists.
VR and voice recognition are right on. As an Education Technologist, I STILL hear uninformed teachers referring to things on the computer as "virtual reality". It's not VR, and even if it were, VR sucks. Voice recognition is a huge steamy joke as well. Every day I fire up Dragon Naturally Speaking and fire off a funny-ass email to my wife. It's never even close, even though we have a pretty high quality microphone, in a sound-production room, and I've been training the stupid software for over 6 months.
I'm not sure Lisa could be considered a failure either, since it was the direct descendent of the original Macintosh.
Hey, cool! Thanks! I wish more users on here were as cordial. I love car analogies, because I love cars and most people on slashdot have no passion for cars, so it makes for good arguments!
(1) A car without a stereo is not feature-complete. A consumer OS without a browser is not feature-complete
(5) Nobody buys a car based on the built-in stereo and even if a car didn't have a stereo, that wouldn't stop anybody from buying a car they really wanted in the first place.