[geeks] Now what am I supposed to do with this?

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 02:22:31PM -0400, Big Endian wrote:
> >Hrmmm.
> >
> >My IBM DeathStar 75 hard drive died on me a while back, and the Airborne
> >Express guy just dropped off my replacement drive.  While the drive has
> >been gone, my PC has been sitting around dead, and I've finalized leaving
> >my previous job, which means I have an Ultra 10 and an Octane here.
> 
> MP3s on the U10?  75 gigs is nothing to sneeze at, even if it is IDE.


> How hard is doing word processing in LaTeX?  For those of us used to 
> things like Claris/Appleworks?

If you are just straight word processing, like for letters, or un-footnoted
term papers, it is obscenely easy.  Just open up your generic template (made
by copying a file from a friend), and start typeing.

Math is great, but you actually have to learn it, unlike the drag and drop 
that is MS Eqn Editor.  Inserting pictures is easy enough.

I still haven't gotten the hang of foot notes though.  They are supposed to
be easy.  Just enter your references in a Bibtex database, then insert the
footnote tag and it both footnotes there, and updates the works cited page, 
but it never worked that well for me.

For things that require carefull design, like resumes or newletters, I haven't
tried Latex.  I have one resume in Word, one in HTML, but I need to get a 
better one.  I haven't decided whether to do it in Latex, Corel Draw, 
Illustrator (I have a legit copy, but I lack the disks, argh), or 
QuarkXPress.

I know that Multi column newsletters, etc, are just up Latex's alley, but I
can't picture how it would work to do them, other than exporting the articles
as post script, then arranging them in a DTP program that understands 
postscript well enough to rearrange column breaks, continuations, etc.
 
> >I think my PC just became obsolete.  This sort-of bothers me, and I don't
> >know why.
> 
> I've been trying to make my PC obsolete for 2 years now, I'm almost there.

My PC would be obselete if I could afford an actuall replacement.  A 
replacement would need to be along the lines of a dual G4, a dual Octane, or
a single G4 or O2, and additional rack computing power from something like
U2s or multiple Netras.  But, time brings prices down and makes real machines
more affordable.  Just not quite as quickly as I would like.


-- 
Joshua D. Boyd