[SunRescue] Should an editor require you to think?

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On 7 Mar 2001, Graham Hughes wrote:
> Anyway, experimental evidence has suggested to others and suggests to
> me that word processors do to words what food processors do to food.

At one job I had, part of my job was maintianing and updating a nearly 500
page design document in Word.  This document was heavy on tables and
screen shots, and trying to get screen shots to stay where they belonged
was insane.  Spell checks took forever.  Everyday that I had to touch that
document I wished I could move it to latex.  Long technical documents was
what tex was made for in the first place.  

While food processors can be a nice convienience (I personally like using
them to grate cheese.  Never used them for anything else), I see no real
convinience to word processors as they stand.  If people would junk Word
enmass and switch to latex (maybe using a front end that let them see what
it looked like as they were typing, but that didn't allow freeform
manipulation of the fonts and styles) that the world of documents would be
much easier on the eyes.  I've gotten a number of comments on how nice
school reports done in latex look.  And I don't even know latex that well.
I have three template files (a letter, a single spaced report, and a
double spaced report) that I copy and use to type my documents in 
and I don't totally understand how they are setup, and I know how to enter
math formulas and tables and images.  That is all I really know about
latex. 

--
Joshua Boyd