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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.ysu.edu!news.radio.cz!newsbastard.radio.cz!news.radio.cz!CESspool!hammer.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!somsky From: somsky@dirac.phys.washington.edu (William R. Somsky) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy Subject: Re: Word vs Latex Date: 6 Mar 1997 18:39:07 GMT Organization: University of Washington Lines: 40 Message-ID: <5fn30b$heo@nntp1.u.washington.edu> References: <5d3sr2$44n@nntp1.best.com> <5ffg7n$c69$1@mars.mcs.net> <5fknj1$bfb@web.nmti.com> <01bc29e6$f20ce700$0b9e32ca@development1> NNTP-Posting-Host: dirac.phys.washington.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:163076 comp.os.linux.networking:71041 comp.os.linux.setup:101242 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6233 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2735 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:55933 In article <01bc29e6$f20ce700$0b9e32ca@development1>, Thomas Beagle <thomas@actrix.gen.nz> wrote: > If you're using Word for large documents you should be trying to separate > the content from the layout as much as possible. Design your document > layout and implement it with styles, then enter your content and apply > styles as you go. If you need to change the appearance anywhere you should > either not do it or create a new style and use it consistently from that > point on. Anything else will just lead to inconsistency or hours of > mindless tweaking in dialog boxes (or writing macros to reformat the text > for you - thereby reimplementing styles in your own code!). Yep, if you're going to use Word, or any similar system, that's the thing you should do. However, how many people actually do that? One of the disgusting things I found working w/ Word with other people was that they _didn't_ do such things. They did stuff like hitting the return twice to put a space between paragraphs -- ending up with blank paragraphs to cause the spacing -- rather than setting the paragraph style to have inter-paragraph spaces. And I found places where for headings they didn't use the proper heading style (which would take care of things like not breaking the page between the heading and the following paragraph), but instead just wnet to the menu bar and changed the fontsize and emboldened it. That's one of the big disadvantages of WYSIWYG setups. People have a tendancy to fool around pushing buttons and pulling menus until they end up with a kludge that looks more or less right, rather than finding the proper way of doing something, like using a style. And since all that you see is what the result will look like, and not what's actually there, it's hard to track down these misusages to clean up something that someone else has done. And that's one of the reasons why I prefer a YAFIYGI (you asked for it, you got it) system, where WYSIWYS (what you see is what you _said_) rather than WYSIWYG (what you see it what you _get_). ________________________________________________________________________ Dr. William R. Somsky somsky@phys.washington.edu Department of Physics, Box 351560 B432 Physics-Astro Bldg Univ. of Washington, Seattle WA 98195-1560 206/616-2954