Comments on: LaTeX vs. Word vs. Writer

By: Jimbo

Jimbo — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:29:04 +0000

Aren’t you just comparing a proper implementation of OpenType features (ligatures, etc) with software that doesn’t implement it at all (MS Office)? The Adobe suite and other professional software do implement all of those, and can do probably better on the small caps, since latex seems to alias characters disproportionally (eg the second b in Bob looks heavier).

By: Eyolf Østrem

Eyolf Østrem — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:04:32 +0000

Oops. Thanks. Embarrassing, with such a specimen of verbal pollution in that spot.

By: steve selverston

steve selverston — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:04:43 +0000

thanks for the nice comparison. the biggest problem with latex I’ve had so far is when professor douchebag demands that the term paper be in .doc format. latex, of course, makes .pdf files. particularly for mac users, there’s no easy way to go from latex to .doc that I’m aware of. there are some tools for windows users, but even they aren’t free.

By: Thomas B. Higgins

Thomas B. Higgins — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:04:43 +0000

Please write “pollution,” not “pollusion.” Thank you.

By: ramy

ramy — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:35:16 +0000

when I wrote my thesis I used word 2007. It took me quite a bit to understand how to do it but eventually Word is a good choice. I made a tutorial and template that makes everythin very easy check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soQTECGcY9M

By: Chaanakya

Chaanakya — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:32:54 +0000

Did you try what this person tried?
http://groups.google.com/group/latexusersgroup/browse_thread/thread/e4d2cff5d4d9a1f5

By: Ondrej

Ondrej — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:56:05 +0000

Great article. Thanks.

By: Stan

Stan — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:34:38 +0000

Hi, Your article is interesting. I think you are a fan of Latex, so you highlight the advantages of Latex. So you avoid telling the problems with latex.
The real important problems are also in Latex. To name a few:
1. Just try using Charter font in Latex and test: (f). You will notice that ‘f’ and ‘)’ will touch each other. (Same like in Figure 2, left). So there is nothing superiority in latex. Latex also makes problems like in Word.
2. It is impossible to avoid completely all hyphens in Latex. If you try nohyphen package, some words will cross the margin. You can only give some tolerance or penalty to avoid hyphen. But in the new version of Word one can completely avoid hyphens and no words will crosses the margins.

By: word_latex

word_latex — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:59:20 +0000

Hello,
i recently found one thing. Word 2007 is really wonderful and powerful. The main advantage which i like in word 2007 is one can avoid hyphenation completely without any problem. In latex it is impossible. In latex even if you use hyphen penalty it avoids hyphenation, but the line goes beyond the margin.

By: Gaston

Gaston — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:46:54 +0000

Hi.
You are right. In facts, the odt to latex conversion isn’t working for me.
I have exported a big odt file to latex but it did not compile using either pdflatex nor oolatex so far.
I did my tests using OpenOffice 3.0 in Windows, with writer2latex 1.0.1, and MikTex 2.8. Maybe have better luck in linux…

By: Eyolf Østrem

Eyolf Østrem — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:04:25 +0000

Yes, you can do that, but not losslessly, and that is a requirement for anything but the most basic, one-off conversion. Some things will be lost, because the tools aren’t detailed enough, and some things will look right, but for the wrong reason: User-defined LaTeX classes tend to be disregarded, \usepackage{} likewise, etc. There is no tool (that I know of) that lets you convert from Word/Writer to LaTeX and back again and get the same file.

By: Gaston

Gaston — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:29:32 +0000

“you can’t easily go back to OOo again once you have done any editing of the LaTeX file”
Maybe you can use latex2html, then open the html file with writer and export it to odt.

By: Markus Schabel

Markus Schabel — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:27:19 +0000

I find this pretty interesting. I’m writing almost anything with LaTeX and I’m always impressed by the results.

It would be interesting to make the same analysis with eBook readers. I’ve just purchased a nook (which is a great gadget), and noticed that it doesn’t display any ligatures (at least in ePub books, I haven’t tried PDF yet, but I think it will be the same).

Since eBooks are used for reading (that means static text, no need for WYSIWYG) I think the display mechanisms need some work to achieve good readable text. However, often printed books are also missing these “prettyfiers”.

So why do eBook readers work with ePub or PDF instead of LaTeX? ;-)

By: Eyolf Østrem

Eyolf Østrem — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:31:33 +0000

I’ll have to check this out. I know I had some problems with the special characters not being embedded properly, so that viewing it with Adobe Acrobat, they wouldn’t show, whereas any native linux pdf viewer had no problem with the files. It sounds like what you describe.
If that is the case, it is a depressing testimony of the shallowness of the internet: the article (and the file) has been online for a couple of years now, with quite a few daily views, but you’re the first person to mention this…

By: Confused

Confused — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:45:09 +0000

I am confused. Is there something wrong with your PDF sample? The LaTeX sample is absolutely terrible — no small caps, broken font weighting in the title, bad weights for italics, no ligatures, no real ellipses. Essentially all of the things you cite in your article are not seen in the PDF. The worst thing is, I know from previous use that your explanation of LaTeX’s functionality is what I ought to be seeing.