Re: [tlug] Poll: OpenOffice or LibreOffice?

[Edward Middleton <edward.middleton@example.com>]

On 05/18/2014 08:18 PM, Bruno Raoult wrote:
> To come back to our subject,
>
> My point was: Do children should learn chess today? I would say "no",
> as the competition value died, and the fun too.
> This is an historical game, and current champions are likely near the last ones.
> Your beautiful chess game is likely already with the checkers one,
> somewhere in garage.
>
> The analogy is: Should "normal" people learn Emacs or LaTeX today?
> Even programmers?
> No (for me), again (except for 0.001% of people who have a good reason
> to use them).
> I don't say they are bad (as I won't say chess is a bad game).
> LaTeX could be a good format (maybe the best, you will say), but
> people should not have to care the file format. They need a simple interface,
> which will render correctly, for mostly 3-4 cases:
> - printing at home (this is mostly postscript - I mean before final
> printer specific language)
> - correct display on screen
> - sending to a publisher (today they mostly want Word or PDF)
> - sharing RW with someone to edit
> The underlying format is meaningless for most of us. The source could
> be anything, and nobody cares.
>
> IMHO, LaTeX will follow chess, soon or later: A memory in Wikipedia.

LaTex has a completely different model for document generation then MS 
word. It is geared towards generating high quality documents.  LaTex 
deals with content and layout separately.

In LaTex you generate a simple file format that is mostly just annotated 
text.  Most people would then apply a standard layout template which 
generates a beautifully document.

LaTex has superior layout capabilities, which make it possible to 
generate beautiful documents with just annotated content.

I don't think anyone who has anything worth writing would not benefit 
from learning LaTex, whether LaTex becomes their primary tool of choice 
is another question.

If you are looking to hide inane fluff behind aggressive layout its 
probably not the best tool for the job.  To a large extent, LaTex frees 
you from having to deal with layout issues.

Edward

1. You do need to know, or at least have a reference to, the markup but 
thats not beyond the capabilities of anyone capable of writing.