[rescue] ARGH

[joshua d boyd]

On Sun, Jul 29, 2001 at 09:31:40PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> woods at weird.com (Greg A. Woods) wrote:
> > On Sunday, July 29, 2001 at 17:36:30 (+0100), David Cantrell wrote:
> > > Anyway, there's nowt wrong with running Windows, just as long as you
> > > remember that it's an application, not an OS.
> > As has been said already in this thread it's an application that nobody,
> > and I really mean absolytely nobody, really needs.
> 
> True, I don't need windows, but I *do* need a word processor and a
> route finder.  There are no good alternatives that I have found.  And
> neither application worked acceptably under wine last time I tried.

Try a new wine. 
 
> > > * - yes, I'm using a word processor from 1992.  Why should I change when
> > > it does everything I want?
> > 
> > So why would you ever need one that runs under M$-Winblows?  There
> > really are lots of better tools in better environments.
> 
> Feel free to point one out.  'Better' includes being free-as-in-beer,
> being able to work on my main desktop machine (x86 running Linux and
> Gnome) as well as on any future machine I may use*, and having all the
> functionality of Amipro which I use.  Being able to import all my old
> documents would be a bonus, but I feel it would be unreasonable to
> require it.

Nothing seems to import Amipro (still have it installed on a 486 for when
I come across unconverted files from when I used to use the program).

Now, speaking as someone who in someways might not be the most powerful
Word user, but has done many things that really pushed Word (not to
mention Amipro), I have to say that I'm pretty happy with Latex.  Doing
database merges is a dream.  I've had hellish problems with word because
it refuses to do a mail merge, then let me save each letter as a seperate
file.  Saving each record of the merge to a seperate word file by hand is
possible, but each file still has a database connection, and that breaks
when the database is extremely complex, and you want to be using the word
files on a laptop with 24megs of ram.  Oh, the reason for needing to merge
to seperate files is because each letter then needs to be edited by
hand.  No way to automate the editing.

Anyway, that digression aside, LaTeX is also far superior for managing 500
page technical documents.  And LaTeX is also far superior for doing Math
type setting.  The only thing that Word makes easier is desktop
publishing, but it still sucks for that.  I keep an old copy of publisher
(also on the 486) for when I need it.  It runs rather snappy.

Further, for whatever editor you choose, you can still use ispell, style,
and diction.  I fail to see why anyone would prefer Word, unless they felt
allergic to the text only nature on LaTeX, and why would a unix geek be
allergic to that?

Can't help you with the the routefinder.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd