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Solo Ace

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 · Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 1:57 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Try Microsoft Publisher, or some equivalent.

CypherJF · Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 2:13 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Quark Press, etc. desktop publishing apps are typically used in the market place for making professional documents.
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Blocks · Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 3:17 pm *Post maybe stupid* 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 · Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 4:00 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject: Re: LaTeX

Solo Ace · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 1:54 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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 · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 5:41 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Something like that could be done in LaTeX, though I simply think that guy didn't have the balls to do it.

Solo Ace · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 6:20 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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 · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 8:28 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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.
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Dr Brain · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 8:43 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

You can make something like that in Word/OpenOffice, you just have to fiddle around with the headers, footers, headings and margins forever.
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Bak · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 11:38 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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?
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Animate Dreams · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 3:39 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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 · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 4:51 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

http://www.rpi.edu/campus/doc/acs.memos/rpi109.pdf

Animate Dreams · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 6:22 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

=\ I can't read pdf.

CypherJF · Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 6:29 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Doc Flabby · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 3:58 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

download fox pdf viewer

Animate Dreams · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 4:17 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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 · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 5:01 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Get a real PDF viewer like Foxit Reader.

Cyan~Fire · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 7:02 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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.

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Animate Dreams · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 12:08 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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 · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 2:33 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

there's latex templates designed for printing specifically to journals or even books. html would never look good there

Dr Brain · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 10:34 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Doc Flabby · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 12:24 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

pdf is great, once you stop using adobe products with it.

Animate Dreams · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 4:33 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

SamHughes · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 4:41 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

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.