Journal FortKnox's Journal: What a JOKE! 15
This poll (about best office suite) is pathetic. Most of the high scoring posts are "I just use vim/emacs with LaTeX."
First of all, using any editor to hand-create documents instead of an office product is just dumb. I'm guessing most of those posters are either trying to show you how 1337 they are, don't make any documents some big 'suit' would see/read, or they spend far too much time doing something the long way.
Second, MS Office is the obvious choice (which is why it is winning, and its not the trolls that are picking it). It doesn't crash, you can turn clippy 'off', and its pretty straightforward to use (unless you are doing something complex, which is usually unnecessary). None of the other suites come close to the user-friendliness nor stability of MS Office. If you are someone that requires constant use of an office suite, you are someone with a Windows box and MS Office.
No, I'm not trolling, just go find a publishing company that uses any of the other Office suites.
First of all, using any editor to hand-create documents instead of an office product is just dumb. I'm guessing most of those posters are either trying to show you how 1337 they are, don't make any documents some big 'suit' would see/read, or they spend far too much time doing something the long way.
Second, MS Office is the obvious choice (which is why it is winning, and its not the trolls that are picking it). It doesn't crash, you can turn clippy 'off', and its pretty straightforward to use (unless you are doing something complex, which is usually unnecessary). None of the other suites come close to the user-friendliness nor stability of MS Office. If you are someone that requires constant use of an office suite, you are someone with a Windows box and MS Office.
No, I'm not trolling, just go find a publishing company that uses any of the other Office suites.
But... (Score:2)
If you are someone that requires constant use of an office suite, you are someone with a Windows box and MS Office.
I don't require constant use of an office suite, but I think even if I did I'd still stick with my MacOSX/OfficeX setup. (Windows is not required for productivity.)
Also, you should try out that argument on some of the people happily using non-microsoft office suites on a daily basis (there are a lot of them out there)...
Re:But... (Score:1)
Re:But... (Score:1)
Re:But... (Score:1)
StarOffice 5.2 does the job for me. Kinda only choice since i'm also a windoze-free dude (mdk 7.2 on my laptop does everything).
LaTeX (Score:2)
The issue with Word is that its equation editor completely sucks eggs; it adds megabytes to an average (i.e., with at least 20-30 equations) document and gets very unstable the more you pound on it. It is a fine tool for small stuff, but it is like an idiot with a loaded gun when it comes to proper page layout (Hey, maw! Set yer page margins to .25' so we can fit ALL the text on one page!).
I agree that vi and a stripped TeX pacakge is no good; you have to have macros and a spell checker :) to make it through the day.
If I were writing a book, then I'd use LaTeX because I could put a three hundred page document on a floppy, whereas trying the same thing with Word would require at least a Zip disk...maybe.
Oh, and just how Charlie don't surf, Word don't do PDF (without Adobe, that is)--but WinEdt + MikTex surely does.
Re:LaTeX (Score:2)
First, before anyone gets their panties in a knot I love LaTex fot technical things. But for writing a single page tutorial on patch management quickly I use word. You can have things good, fast, cheap (pick two). Word is fast while the remaining choice is debatable (cheap for space? cheap for cost? good meaning spell checked in perty?). Now, let's state something about your "Word Don't do PDF." It doesn't out of the box, but print to a post script printer as a file and do a ps2pdf on it and you're golden. Now, for a quick and dirty thing with a GOOD equation editor I use star office (or whatever it's calling itself these days) and while I still run 5.2 the equation editor is almost tex-esq, and several orders of magnitude more powerful than the word thing (technically is the MS office equation editor since it's not specific to word).
And BTW, my name is Charlie, and I don't surf the ocean, but I do surf the web. However I think "Homey Don't Play That [iafrica.com]."
Re:LaTeX (Score:2)
I use it all the time. We write analysis software for energy markets. The design documents require listing the respective equations that the PhDs upstairs (or in the basement, I forget which) design. A typical design document for a single module runs somewhere around 600 pages. You can't run that under Word. It, like other Microsoft products, appears to be designed for small and midtrange jobs.
I agree with you that if you don't care about layout and want to get something out quick and dirty, you'll whip out Word. Smaller, quicker, and dirtier may even necessitate notepad, but that's really pushing the edge of tolerance, no? :)
Publishing company (Score:2)