[plug] LyX/LaTeX vs Word: the verdict

[Peter Wright]

On Sat, Nov 06, 1999 at 03:10:27PM +0800, Christian wrote:
> Warren Duff wrote:
> > 
> > I am also keeping it in mind for writing my Thesis due around this time
> > next year.  However, I must hand in an electronic version on either
> > disk or CD.  The school requires it in word format - (restraint of
> > trade if you ask me!).

I'd phrase it quite a bit more stongly than that.

> > So is it possible to use LaTeX to convert to a word document to satisfy
> > the school's restrictive policy?

After I'd finished retching at the idea of doing something so revolting
*grin* *roll of eyes*....

> I believe there is a LaTeX to RTF converter...  I don't know how well it
> works though.

... I went and had a look for this intriguing beast Christian mentions, to
see if there are any confirmed sightings or if it is only a legend.

After doing a search on "latex rtf converter" on www.google.com, I found my
way to:

http://www.kfa-juelich.de/isr/1/texconv/texcnv.html

and under that:

http://www.kfa-juelich.de/isr/1/texconv/textopc.html

There seem to be quite a few (well, about half a dozen) converters, of
which the author of the page admits none are perfect - however, some might
work reasonably well, depending on what your requirements are.

[ As an aside: I'd point out that lower in the page where he mentions HTML
a few times, I've used the latex2html Perl program to convert my Honours
thesis and I thought it did a great job. I'd definitely avoid anything that
makes use of the inbuilt MS Word HTML-save facility - it sucks bollocks.
Produces some of the most atrocious HTML I've ever seen. :) ]

> My advice would be to try and negotiate with the school because such a
> policy is quite ridiculous.

I'd phrase it somewhat more strongly. Insane. Idiotic. Pathetic. Moronic.
Quite a few other words ending in "ic", none of them flattering and some of
them not in the dictionary. :)

> I would have thought restricting you to one platform (ok, one and a half
> if you count Mac) would severely impede the range of work you could do.

There are quite few fundamental problems with restricting you to using a
commercial product from one specific supplier. Let me see how long a list I
can build:

1. Price. I believe a shrink-wrapped copy of Word costs in the order of
   several hundred dollars (please someone correct me if I'm wrong). It
   also has to be used under a Win95/Mac-capable computer with Win9[58]/
   NT/MacOS installed (another hundred or so dollars for the OS at least). 

   The standard disclaimer for educational institution at this point is
   "well, if you're a poor student and  don't have/can't afford a computer,
   just use those provided in the labs at uni." This is (nowadays) not
   always an acceptable solution.
   
   I know when I was doing CS honours in '95, we had an honours lab with 2
   WinNT PCs, six X-terminals and a couple of Macs. If you needed to use
   Word in the Hons lab you had to use one of the two PCs, which often had
   one of the poor fools using Visual/Borland C++ (myself included :) using
   them.  There was a lab with about 24 PCs next door, but there were of
   course not always any free (especially around project time, when the
   situation got just ridiculous). Of course if you were using LaTeX, you
   could use _any_ of those ten(?) machines, plus the 24 next door, plus
   any of the thirty or forty XTerminals in the labs down the corridor,
   plus any of the 30ish greenscreen terminals in the lab next to them.
   Plus any of the Macs in the first year lab at the other end of the
   corridor (don't think anyone ever got that desperate though :).
   
   Thank god there were only two people in CS Hons 95 using Word to do
   their dissertation, one who was hardly ever in the lab and did all his
   work at home. The other 10 of us who were almost always in the lab never
   had a problem where we couldn't work for lack of a machine.

2. Portability. See above, mostly. You can write LaTeX on just about any
   computer that has a text editor. You can use LateX on scrapheap 286 PCs
   (or even crappier if you're really desperate :), you can even work on
   LaTeX documents in a terminal over a network. You can only use MS-Word
   on 486-66 or better Win95 PCs or reasonably recent Macintoshes.

3. Gross restriction of functionality. Word is just bloody well not good
   enough for serious and lengthy academic documents. Why the hell
   shouldn't someone be able to use a far superior package like Adobe
   Framemaker or Scientific Word or Lyx/LaTeX, or even mostly equivalent
   competing wordprocessors like Corel WordPerfect or StarWriter because of
   an arbitrary restriction?

   In the UWA CS department, all the staff were at least fully aware of
   Word's limitations (even more acute back in those days, of course), and
   they were almost all LaTeX users for their research articles for
   publication. They _did_ restrict us to using either LaTeX or MS-Word, but
   they at least had a moderately good reason - they required a particular
   layout format for which they had an MS-Word template file and a LaTeX
   style file. I suspect that if you were capable of creating an equivalent
   "template" for any other products that produced at minimum the same look
   and output quality, they'd have no problems with you using it.

4. Output quality. See above again, mostly. You can use MS-Word to write
   cute little documents with pretty clip-art. You can use LaTeX/LyX,
   Framemaker, Scientific Word to create serious and professional looking
   documents with attractive and well-organised layout. Anyone who's seen
   academic dissertations done in MS-Word compared with those done in LaTeX
   will know you can see the difference immediately and it is significant.

5. Flexibility and the ability to work with a variety of other useful
   tools. Emacs/XEmacs are the major "other tools" that would pop into
   mind, but what I was thinking of that would be immensely useful is
   something like CVS (which I wasn't introduced to until after uni, woe is
   me :), a version control system which is pretty useless with MS-Word
   because MS-Word files are binary, so you can't record changes (ie. "gee,
   what did I change between version 1.15 and version 1.18 ...").

> I know in my case it would have been impossible to use Windows -- in fact
> all of my thesis was written under Linux and non-Unix platforms weren't
> used at all during the course of the research (sounds a little like one
> of those disclaimers against animal cruelty, doesn't it? *grin*).

Very amusing. :)

Warren, I'd recommend the following, in increasing order of drasticity :-) :

Step 1.
  Formally approach whoever's responsible for this restriction and explain
  verbally why you'd like to use something other than Word and ask if that
  would really seriously be a problem. Watch for key signs like
  incomprehension when you say the word "LateX" :). If that doesn't get
  anywhere, go on to step 2...

Step 2.
  Attempt to find someone in the department who _does_ use LateX (if it's a
  scientific dept., I'd be very surprised if you couldn't. The higher up
  the better. Explain the situation to them and see if they can help.

Step 3.
  Write a letter or arrange an interview with the head of the department.
  Explain the situation to him/her. Ask that the restriction be removed.
  If that gets nowhere, go on to step 4...

Step 4.
  Arrange as effectively as you can to humiliate the department in a public
  way in front of the uni and in front of other universities for being
  ignorant and unwilling to listen (not to mention Microsoft weenies).
  Usenet postings and a witty web site are good ways to manage this.
  This in itself may not accomplish much, but it will make you feel better.:)

Step 5.
  Write your dissertation in LateX anyway. Submit it in electronic form
  using one of the above conversion methods to RTF->Word. Submit it in
  hardcopy printed as LaTeX output. After you've got the top mark (you
  clever chap :) tell them you didn't use Word after all, ha ha,
  nya-nya-nyanya-nya.

> Regards,
> 
> Christian.

Pete the Helpful.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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