Re: Ubuntu vs. Debian (was Re: Introduction)

On Sun, Feb 11, 2007 at 09:03:14PM +0100, Joe Hart wrote:

The MS Office is already bought. The issue is when she opens a .doc
file that she created on another computer with OO, it doesn't look the
same. If she creates a .doc file with OO and uses MS Word to open it,
it doesn't look the same.

Because .doc is *not* designed to look the same on every machine. If
that is what you want, then .doc is the wrong answer. There are plenty
of formats that are designed to look the same everywhere, like text,
PDF, PS, DVI, and so on.

I am a writer, and I used Word to write my books. Personally I don't
like OO Writer. It, just like MS Word is overblown. I still haven't
found the Perfect Word Processor, but now at least I can get the source
code to one that I think is good, and if I can understand the code, I
might even be able to make it my Perfect Word (Pun intended).

When I was starting work on my honours thesis, a frined who had recently
completed his told me that he *wished* that he had used LaTeX. He had
ended up doing his in Word and by the time he realized it was going to
be way too much work, it was too late for him to move all his work over.
I took the hit up front, got past the (very steep) learning curve on a
conference paper and then went on to finish my thesis using LaTeX.

Now, I can't vouch for the quality of the *content* of my thesis, but it
sure did look nice :-)

In any event, LaTeX made things very easy once I had learned to quit
worrying so much about how things looked right then and started
concentrating on the content. I also did two other conference papers
and my Master's thesis in LaTeX. I find it very powerful. Of course,
as Peter Parker's uncle said, "With great power there must also come
great responsibility."

Regards,

-Roberto

--
Roberto C. Sanchez
http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
http://www.connexer.com

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