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Solo Ace - Sun May 06, 2007 1:47 pm
Post subject: Software for creating "formal" documents

Documents with a certain "formality" like papers for school or product manuals don't look like they were written in MS Word.

I think Word can be a pain for longer documents and documents that require a certain markup. They don't really look anyhting like professional.

So, my question is: What software do you recommend for creating documents that require a formal markup and a professional expression?

Muskrat - Sun May 06, 2007 1:57 pm
Post subject:

Try Microsoft Publisher, or some equivalent.

CypherJF - Sun May 06, 2007 2:13 pm
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Quark Press, etc. desktop publishing apps are typically used in the market place for making professional documents.

Blocks - Sun May 06, 2007 3:17 pm
Post subject: LaTeX

The pros (at least in scientific academia) use a typesetting system known as LaTeX. The learning curve is steeper than any WYSIWYG sysyem, but it produces beautiful documents. Especially if you need to include lots of math. For an actual implementation on Windows, try using MiKTeX.

Mine GO BOOM - Sun May 06, 2007 4:00 pm
Post subject: Re: LaTeX

Blocks wrote:

LaTeX

Learn LaTeX and you will rarely ever open Word again.

Solo Ace - Mon May 07, 2007 1:54 am
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I know some Wikipedia LaTeX haha, but something like the Reverse code engineering: an in-depth analysis of the bagle virus that was posted here before (by Cypher?), was created in LaTeX? I doubt it. But that's an example of what I mean...

Blocks - Mon May 07, 2007 5:41 am
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Something like that could be done in LaTeX, though I simply think that guy didn't have the balls to do it.

Solo Ace - Mon May 07, 2007 6:20 am
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Well, I wrote my first real LaTeX document. It's really, really nice but I don't have the time to rewrite what I'm working on now of course, but probably next time I might if I'm allowed to.

At the moment I'm just using Word, maybe I'll look into Adobe Acrobat too.

Doc Flabby - Mon May 07, 2007 8:28 am
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You can create very professional looking documents in word.

What tends to make a document look professional is the expensive fonts they have bought. The fonts that some with word suck. If you get some pro fonts your document will look substantially more pro.

Dr Brain - Mon May 07, 2007 8:43 am
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You can make something like that in Word/OpenOffice, you just have to fiddle around with the headers, footers, headings and margins forever.

Bak - Mon May 07, 2007 11:38 am
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Latex is really nice. I had to do a final paper for my philsophy of computer science class and wrote the whole thing in word then converted it to latex and it looks twice as good. The only thing I hate is that there's no spell checker in most plain-text programs, much less one that could sort of the latex from the actual content. Anyone know of something that could do such a task?

Animate Dreams - Mon May 07, 2007 3:39 pm
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Well, does anyone have a good tutorial or something like that for Latex? That Wikipedia site didn't have near enough information for me.

Bak - Mon May 07, 2007 4:51 pm
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http://www.rpi.edu/campus/doc/acs.memos/rpi109.pdf

Animate Dreams - Mon May 07, 2007 6:22 pm
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=\ I can't read pdf.

CypherJF - Mon May 07, 2007 6:29 pm
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Why?

Doc Flabby - Tue May 08, 2007 3:58 am
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download fox pdf viewer

Animate Dreams - Tue May 08, 2007 4:17 pm
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Because I don't have enough space/resources for Adobe Acrobat. I hate pdf files. Educational documents have no business being in something like pdf, only formal documents. Pdf is way overused. >_>

CypherJF - Tue May 08, 2007 5:01 pm
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Get a real PDF viewer like Foxit Reader.

Cyan~Fire - Tue May 08, 2007 7:02 pm
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Yep, many professors should use HTML instead of PDFs a lot of the time, but what's a lowly student to do?

I even had a computer science professor writing stuff in MS Word.

Animate Dreams - Wed May 09, 2007 12:08 am
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I personally don't see what's wrong with notepad. Few professors I've had do anything other text with their html(which is fine too), but I think html can pretty much do everything pdf can. I understand it may not look as pretty on everyone's computer, but they can get over that. If I want to change how a document is going to be displayed because it's easier for me to read, I should be able to do that.

Bak - Wed May 09, 2007 2:33 am
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there's latex templates designed for printing specifically to journals or even books. html would never look good there

Dr Brain - Wed May 09, 2007 10:34 am
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Animate Dreams wrote:

Do you know how hard it is to get HTML to fit exactly onto one page or have the page break exactly where you want it, and how easy it is to get a PDF to do the same thing? HTML doesn't even look the same between browsers, much less computers. PDF is a good thing, and has its place. Because you don't like the only viewer you've ever used doesn't change any of that.

Doc Flabby - Wed May 09, 2007 12:24 pm
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pdf is great, once you stop using adobe products with it.

Animate Dreams - Wed May 09, 2007 4:33 pm
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Dr Brain wrote:

[..]

Do you know how hard it is to get HTML to fit exactly onto one page or have the page break exactly where you want it, and how easy it is to get a PDF to do the same thing? HTML doesn't even look the same between browsers, much less computers. PDF is a good thing, and has its place. Because you don't like the only viewer you've ever used doesn't change any of that.

My point is that my professors should just let me break pages wherever the hell I want. Seriously, a perfectly positioned page break isn't going to help me learn more, and that's why I'm at college. I'm not there to watch them break pages perfectly.

As for the viewers, all viewers are guaranteed to take up more resources than notepad. I don't like wasting my resources on fat programs just to professors can make their papers look 'pretty'.

SamHughes - Wed May 09, 2007 4:41 pm
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Um, if your computer can't open up PDF documents, your computer's got a serious problem. My computer from 1992 can read PDF documents. That makes your computer fifteen years out of date. And considering that it's a tutorial on LaTeX, using a plain text document would be pretty damn useless.

Dr Brain - Wed May 09, 2007 5:22 pm
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Notepad can't do anything serious. Lets take a typical paper, like the one I turned in last week. It has at the following components:

Notepad can do none of those easily (and without page breaks, footnotes and page numbers are impossible). If you think it sufficient, then you're probably not going to do well in professional life, where formal documents are absolutely essential.

Now, you're about to say that they can use notepad to write HTML instead. I know a number of professors, and I can tell you two things: their programming/html generally sucks, and their free time is limited. Both these combine together to give you the fact that writing HTML is a waste of your time and their time.

Animate Dreams - Wed May 09, 2007 6:18 pm
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It doesn't have to be PLAIN text, it can be html. html would be perfect. I was really talking about my professors then. Which, on another note, even though they put stuff up in pdf format, it's usually still just text - they don't use any of its features - so there's no reason they should use pdfs. Now, one of my teachers just copies/pastes his notes onto an html pgae. He doesn't even have to know any html for that. Anyway, Brain, nothing any professor has given me in PDF has had any of those features, save for a title page. It's ridiculous to use pdf in these situations.

As for my computer, it can open pdf files if I had Adobe Acrobat, it just slows the whole thing down. Right now, when I hit alt-tab, I have two pages filled with my programs, and I'm using them all. That's why I don't want to use programs like Adobe Acrobat. Opera is the biggest program I use, and I'm probably going to get rid of it.

Dr Brain - Wed May 09, 2007 7:23 pm
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I'm assuming you mean Adobe Reader, and surely a computer savvy user that knows how to format HTML well enough to write papers would know that there are other PDF readers out there...

CypherJF - Wed May 09, 2007 7:31 pm
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CypherJF wrote:

Get a real PDF viewer like Foxit Reader.

This is a very slim PDF reader, give it a try.

Cyan~Fire - Wed May 09, 2007 11:10 pm
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"It takes up more resources" != "My computer can't open them"

Anyway, PDFs do have their place but I stand by my point that they are overused.

Animate Dreams - Wed May 09, 2007 11:48 pm
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Cyan~Fire wrote:

"It takes up more resources" != "My computer can't open them"

Anyway, PDFs do have their place but I stand by my point that they are overused.

That's what I was saying. But apparently, as Brain says, since some teachers suck at HTML, it must not be overused. Thank you for showing me the light.

Muskrat - Wed May 09, 2007 11:53 pm
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I really like pdfs. If you deal with many different people needing different kinds of documents, pdfs are a pretty universal solvent when you need something printed.

SamHughes - Thu May 10, 2007 12:35 am
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PDF is better for the tutorial Bak posted because it should be printed. The first time it was given to me, it was given in printed form, because you can't fit a PDF window, an ***** frame, and a DVI viewer comfortably on a 14-inch screen.

Also, if you're writing LaTeX, you're not going to want to be using Notepad, unless it's some kind of fetish. Notepad is literally the worst text editor in existence. (I'm using 'literally' figuratively, of course.) You'll want to use something suited for writing LaTeX. That editor would be *****.