Writing a report : Word, latex, OOo Writer, HTML, ... ?

[Camarade_Tux]

Hi everybody,

For my exams, I'll soon prepare what we call a TIPE in France.

I'll have to provide my examinators with some written documents and I'll do an oral presentation.

The written part will take me more than one year and I don't want to work on MS Office Word for one simple reason : it is not reliable. I even consider it as the software with the higher non-security bugs that won't kill the process. I mean my mother is struggling with it, you can't put the things you want where you want, and many other things.

Moreover, I'll have some maths in my document.

So now, what should I use to write it ?

WordPerfect, LaTeX, OOo Writer, plain HTML... ?

Thanks for your answers.

[LLXX]

Moreover, I'll have some maths in my document.

LaTeX. Nearly a "standard" in the academic community.

[Camarade_Tux]

That what I'm thinking too.

My problem is the time needed to learn this (though I should have holidays) and the lack of wysiwyg mode, or rather live preview. Though again theres Whizzytex + Active-DVI. But I'll have to use *nix and I really lack of time to install it properly.

Anyway, even if I can't get it to work, OCAML rocks.

Does anyone have something against latex ?

[CoffeeFiend]

What do you mean by unreliable? That's the very first such complain i hear in many, many years of using it. Perhaps that's not the exact word you meant? Because I have no idea why would one say that. The only thing I've seen that came somewhat close to that description is people having problems with corrupted documents (because of bad floppies and such).

Your mother struggling with it makes it sound like she needs to pick up a good book or something. It's really not that hard to place most things reasonably well. But then again, it's a word processor - not a a desktop publishing/page layout software (like InDesign), and there's a huge difference. If she needs very precise and powerful positioning, very good typography and all, then she shouldn't use just word alone.

As for math (and in academia no less), as LLXX mentioned, LaTeX is the common way. There are lots of editors (even some for windows, such as LEd).

But there's a few more things you can try, like MathML. Or as a very last resort, if you can't be bothered to learn that stuff or plain don't have the time, you can try to make the equations in something like mathematica and make screen captures and embed those (cropped) images in your documents (wouldn't cut it for a PhD in math, but would be more than sufficient for a high school math homework - no idea WTF a TIPE is, sorry).

[ripken204]

im trying to figure out how its unreliable too, and how wordperfect or openoffice is any better.

ultimate formatting would be html, for me at least. but if you arnt to good of a coder then it may take up too much of your time creating the layout instead of doing your research.

[LLXX]

If she needs very precise and powerful positioning, very good typography and all, then she shouldn't use just word alone.

Speaking of positioning, LaTeX has the interesting ability to position objects with precision better than the wavelength of light (±83nm).

[Zxian]

Either LaTeX or Word would be my choice. For most things, Word will do you just fine, but if you need to submit the document itself to your supervisors/professors, then LaTeX might be a better option. (For all the reasons stated above)