In 2012 IAP, I taught myself how to use LaTeX by typesetting the 8.033 — Relativity lecture notes. I also did this so that the lecturer I had that semester and the lecturer for the following semester would both have these notes at their disposal; for the record, the former is on sabbatical this academic year, while the latter did indeed use it when he taught the class this past fall. I needed to teach myself LaTeX because I was going to be taking 8.13, which I did this past fall, and that requires LaTeX use for papers (and recommends Beamer for presentations as well). That said, recently I was hanging out with some friends and a couple of them suggested that LaTeX isn't really necessary as far as producing scientific papers goes, because Microsoft Office Word 2013 has an advanced enough equation editor that it can essentially replace LaTeX, especially as it now recognizes basic LaTeX syntax. At first, given how much I had used LaTeX (and also given some of my past negative feelings toward Microsoft), I felt a little defensive. But then I realized I should give the comparison a fairer shot, so I decided to see if I could try to replicate one of my PRL-formatted LaTeX-typeset papers in LibreOffice Writer. Follow the jump to see my findings.
Showing posts with label word. Show all posts
Showing posts with label word. Show all posts
2013-04-26
2010-01-15
Microsoft Office Word is Screwy
I know that JH on his Linux in Exile blog (which I follow) has mentioned this before, but I wanted to try it as I thought I had never experienced it before.
When MS Office Word (2007) opens a document and I tell it to print the document, it does so. Then, when I close it, it asks, "Do you want to save your changes?"
What changes? All I did was print it!
It's even worse with read-only files. If I view and then close (without making any modifications to) a read-only file, it asks the same thing.
What changes? Does MS Office Word not know what "read-only" means?
It's astounding how inanely MS Office Word seems to work. When I had a printer hooked up to my computer and used OpenOffice.org on Windows (at that time, it was OO.o 1.X, and later, OO.o 2.0), it never gave me such an issue. That was then. Even now, it gives me no troubles when printing.
It is 2010, and Microsoft Office seemingly doesn't know when it is appropriate (and when it is not) to ask the user to save/not save an opened file?
When MS Office Word (2007) opens a document and I tell it to print the document, it does so. Then, when I close it, it asks, "Do you want to save your changes?"
What changes? All I did was print it!
It's even worse with read-only files. If I view and then close (without making any modifications to) a read-only file, it asks the same thing.
What changes? Does MS Office Word not know what "read-only" means?
It's astounding how inanely MS Office Word seems to work. When I had a printer hooked up to my computer and used OpenOffice.org on Windows (at that time, it was OO.o 1.X, and later, OO.o 2.0), it never gave me such an issue. That was then. Even now, it gives me no troubles when printing.
It is 2010, and Microsoft Office seemingly doesn't know when it is appropriate (and when it is not) to ask the user to save/not save an opened file?
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