geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: JDorfler on Sun, 26 October 2014, 11:02:57
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I like writing once in awhile. Mostly stuff for myself, but sometimes I have to type out SOPs and Manuals for work. I personally use LibreOffice both in Linux and Windows. I was just curious what is ya'll's word processor of choice.
Again, for everyone thanks for posting and thanks for reading.
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I use Word.
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LibreOffice
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i have personally never found a difference.
i use word because i have it now, but i would not bother to pay for it if i had to.
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I use Word.
Yo.
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Note pad
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Note pad
calm down satan
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TextEdit
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Anyone uses LaTeX?
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Anyone uses LaTeX?
I have a buddy who swears by it, he loves it
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I'm liking the variations of the answers from this community. I would have thought most folks would have said "Word". I'm quite impressed. I do believe I have made a very wise decision by joining this forum.
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I'm liking the variations of the answers from this community. I would have thought most folks would have said "Word". I'm quite impressed. I do believe I have made a very wise decision by joining this forum.
we can never agree on anything here
both a blessing and a curse
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Anyone uses LaTeX?
why is there a furry on the official site?
is this only for scientific docs?
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Most times I use notes on iPhone.
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GNU Emacs.
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vi :p
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I'm using Word 2013, but it sucks. If you need to know how your document is formatted as you are typing it, and are very particular about it, then Wordperfect is better. I should try Libra Office or w/e that Linux communist thing is called. Why can't they have Virgo Office, btw? Not everybody is a Libra. http://zodiac-signs-astrology.com/zodiac-signs/virgo.htm
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Anyone uses LaTeX?
I have a buddy who swears by it, he loves it
Either that's me or your other buddy and I would get along.
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Note pad
calm down satan
Actually I use note pad for "ideas" then when they get enough form I transfer them :)
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Notepad2 mod for note taking and word for writing.
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Word 2013 and before that Word 2010... but only because its like $9 for the whole Microsoft package. Job perks they are out there. Also anyone out there in Australia that works for a big organisation (I think government included) you might find you can get this also. Check with IT or administrator I found that most people don't know about it and It will save you a few hundred. I am not sure about the US but I wouldn't be surprised if it originated from there.
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I was just curious what is ya'll's word processor of choice.
I've written about a dozen books. I wanted to do the typesetting myself and my publisher insisted that I use Quark XPress (it was before Adobe's InDesign became very succesful). I emphasize the fact that I did both the writing and the typesetting: it had an influence on my workflow.
So no "word processor" for me: I'd typically write directly in Quark XPress. That's correct: I'd use a typesetting program as if it was a "word processor" :p
It worked perfectly fine. I loved to work that way because it directly "looked like a book", even if I had only a few pages.
I also used to write letters (to be printed and snailmailed) directly in Quark XPress: totally overkill but once printed these were damn good looking letters!
Besides that I managed to convince my publisher once to let me use LaTeX. It was kinda hard because I had to reproduce, under LaTeX, the exact book layout that my publisher was using for its other books.
But I simply loved it: out of all the books I've written it's the one I've written with LaTeX which I'm the most proud of (from a typesetting point of view).
Nowadays I don't write book anymore (sometimes I think about writing books again). When I write letters I simply use Google Docs and export PDFs which I then mail or print/snailmail.
I started playing with LaTeX again but it's been years I haven't used it so I'm a bit rusty.
Here are a few examples of why I think LaTeX totally rocks:
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beautiful-typography-done-in-tex-friends (http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beautiful-typography-done-in-tex-friends)
Note that back when I was writing books and typesetting them myself, I was also typesetting books from other authors. We would receive their books in whatever word processor format.
First thing we'd do was to convert it all to a plain text format and then import that plain text into the typesetting software. It is possible to get back all the heading levels, bold, italics, etc. but we simply wouldn't bother: authors were all using different word processors and some of them had issues exporting "cleanly".
I could easily typeset 100 pages or more per day starting from plain text.
Still have a few LaserJet 4M+ printers from back then (I did write books in the mid-nineties to early 2000s), some of which have printed 300 000+ pages and are still working flawlessly.
Good memories ;)
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Word '10
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I've started using Google Docs for school and I am really liking it. Easy to access documents on multiple computers.
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yup same as nois
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I'm liking the variations of the answers from this community. I would have thought most folks would have said "Word". I'm quite impressed. I do believe I have made a very wise decision by joining this forum.
...and I expected every one to come out with LaTex here :D
Anyway, once you get the basis of LaTex, you will never want to use Word again :)
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I don't write volumes, but when I need a word processor, it's usually Google Docs. Before that, I used LibreOffice (and OpenOffice.org before it). At work I use MS Word, just because all our PCs have Office.
In testing the Windows 10 Technical Preview, I have learned about MS Word Online. It's like Google Docs, but with MS Word as the editor, and OneDrive for storage.
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I use Word and Notepad about equally, depending on the application. Both are free for me, so I don't really need an alternative.
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I use Word most of the time. But if it's something just for myself I will use Sublime Text 2. lolol
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I'm in love with Writemonkey.
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I was just curious what is ya'll's word processor of choice.
I've written about a dozen books. I wanted to do the typesetting myself and my publisher insisted that I use Quark XPress (it was before Adobe's InDesign became very succesful). I emphasize the fact that I did both the writing and the typesetting: it had an influence on my workflow.
So no "word processor" for me: I'd typically write directly in Quark XPress. That's correct: I'd use a typesetting program as if it was a "word processor" :p
It worked perfectly fine. I loved to work that way because it directly "looked like a book", even if I had only a few pages.
I also used to write letters (to be printed and snailmailed) directly in Quark XPress: totally overkill but once printed these were damn good looking letters!
Besides that I managed to convince my publisher once to let me use LaTeX. It was kinda hard because I had to reproduce, under LaTeX, the exact book layout that my publisher was using for its other books.
But I simply loved it: out of all the books I've written it's the one I've written with LaTeX which I'm the most proud of (from a typesetting point of view).
Nowadays I don't write book anymore (sometimes I think about writing books again). When I write letters I simply use Google Docs and export PDFs which I then mail or print/snailmail.
I started playing with LaTeX again but it's been years I haven't used it so I'm a bit rusty.
Here are a few examples of why I think LaTeX totally rocks:
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beautiful-typography-done-in-tex-friends (http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beautiful-typography-done-in-tex-friends)
Note that back when I was writing books and typesetting them myself, I was also typesetting books from other authors. We would receive their books in whatever word processor format.
First thing we'd do was to convert it all to a plain text format and then import that plain text into the typesetting software. It is possible to get back all the heading levels, bold, italics, etc. but we simply wouldn't bother: authors were all using different word processors and some of them had issues exporting "cleanly".
I could easily typeset 100 pages or more per day starting from plain text.
Still have a few LaserJet 4M+ printers from back then (I did write books in the mid-nineties to early 2000s), some of which have printed 300 000+ pages and are still working flawlessly.
Good memories ;)
You should share more of your knowledge. I wouldn't mind writing a book or two ;) I'm sure some of us wouldn't mind either.
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I'd use a typesetting program as if it was a "word processor" :p
It worked perfectly fine. I loved to work that way because it directly "looked like a book", even if I had only a few pages.
This is why I use LaTeX to write stuff. It looks so nice already! It's like using a clicky keyboard to get normal stuff done: overkill but it sounds like you are getting a lot of work done.
Still have a few LaserJet 4M+ printers from back then (I did write books in the mid-nineties to early 2000s), some of which have printed 300 000+ pages and are still working flawlessly.
Good memories ;)
We had a few copiers in my old work that had over 2,000,000 pages each. They're decent but when they paper jam, they JAM.
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I use Word most of the time. But if it's something just for myself I will use Sublime Text 2. lolol
I love that editor... With LaTexing has also a superlative support for LaTex.
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Wasn't thinking, googled LatTex hoping to see some screenshots....got more than I bargained for. :eek:
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You should share more of your knowledge. I wouldn't mind writing a book or two ;) I'm sure some of us wouldn't mind either.
(btw I did write books in french, not english)
I don't really know what knowledge I could share... All I can say is that if I were to do it again, this time I'd definitely take the self-publishing route and do it all myself: not just writing + typesetting but writing + typesetting (using LaTeX but YMMV) + "publishing" + marketing etc. I'd probably sell much less copies than if a publisher took care of that but it would be way more fun and I'd get a much more bigger percentage of each sale :)
I'd of course only write french version of the book: I'd then have someone translate it to english for me ;D
I'd say it's not hard to write a book: it just requires some discipline. And then there aren't many authors who sell a lot of copies: so sometimes (often ?) the hard work doesn't pay very well... But even then I think it's definitely worth it for the experience.
If you want to read on the subject of self-publishing, there are authors more experienced than I am who write blogs / articles about the process. One developer which I follow is "Nathan Barry": he does nearly everything by himself and explains it all. His website is:
http://nathanbarry.com (http://nathanbarry.com)
I'm working on software projects at the moment and I'm keeping (mostly disorganized) notes about the process. There's one particular software project I'd really like to finish / ship and then I'd want to write a book about the entire "adventure".
But nothing is certain yet.
In any case if I manage to get it done, I'd definitely ask some help here on GH to try to get a few tweets, links, etc.
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Anyone uses LaTeX?
I'm allergic.
OT: I grew up using Word, so that's what I use, activation code or not. It's kinda like growing up using QWERTY--it may not be the best, but you're just used to it so it's good enough.
There has to be something amazingly more intuitive out there for me to make a permanent switch.
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You should share more of your knowledge. I wouldn't mind writing a book or two ;) I'm sure some of us wouldn't mind either.
(btw I did write books in french, not english)
I don't really know what knowledge I could share... All I can say is that if I were to do it again, this time I'd definitely take the self-publishing route and do it all myself: not just writing + typesetting but writing + typesetting (using LaTeX but YMMV) + "publishing" + marketing etc. I'd probably sell much less copies than if a publisher took care of that but it would be way more fun and I'd get a much more bigger percentage of each sale :)
I'd of course only write french version of the book: I'd then have someone translate it to english for me ;D
I'd say it's not hard to write a book: it just requires some discipline. And then there aren't many authors who sell a lot of copies: so sometimes (often ?) the hard work doesn't pay very well... But even then I think it's definitely worth it for the experience.
If you want to read on the subject of self-publishing, there are authors more experienced than I am who write blogs / articles about the process. One developer which I follow is "Nathan Barry": he does nearly everything by himself and explains it all. His website is:
http://nathanbarry.com (http://nathanbarry.com)
I'm working on software projects at the moment and I'm keeping (mostly disorganized) notes about the process. There's one particular software project I'd really like to finish / ship and then I'd want to write a book about the entire "adventure".
But nothing is certain yet.
In any case if I manage to get it done, I'd definitely ask some help here on GH to try to get a few tweets, links, etc.
Cool sounds good thanks :thumb:
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- Word 2007 for most work.
- MikTeX (LaTeX variant) for published work.
- WinAVR/Notepad++ for programming.
- Nano on my server or the super clusters.
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If you care about typography, it’s basically impossible to do anything correctly using MS Word. It will fight you every step of the way. Then when you almost get there it will kneecap you, attach you to a horse, and drag you down the street face down. When you shout that you give up, it will give you a few more kicks in the head, for good luck.
Alternately, if you’re writing a structured document (for example a technical book or a research paper), Word (or any WYSIWYG tool) is basically the worst possible tool for planning, organization, editing, and collaboration.
My personal recommendation:
- Compose text using a plain text format like Markdown, reStructuredText, or AsciiDoc. (I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper)
- Use plain text tools for version control and collaboration (for example, git and github).
- If your layout needs are simple, just convert to HTML/ePub/LaTeX/whatever and go
- If your layout needs are more sophisticated and you want something to use snazzy typography, use a real typesetting tool like InDesign
There is literally no circumstance under which Word is the best (or even an adequate) tool for the job, unless a threat of physical force is involved (e.g. an idiot employer demands it, or some terrorists have your family hostage and won’t give them up until you write your paper in Word).
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OpenOffice. Similar to Word, but I hate paying for things :p
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Ur not a good writer.. unless you write and save ur documents onto SSDs...
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I tend to use either Notepad++ or Sublime. The only reason I use them instead of Office is so that I don't singe my eyeballs for hours staring at a while screen.
Honestly, I'll never understand why staring into stark white backgrounds is the norm on computers. My generation is going to have such bad eyesight issues. I can feel my eyes relax very much when I go from a white screen to a dark one (ie. toggling ChangeColors in Chrome).
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If you care about typography, it’s basically impossible to do anything correctly using MS Word. It will fight you every step of the way. Then when you almost get there it will kneecap you, attach you to a horse, and drag you down the street face down. When you shout that you give up, it will give you a few more kicks in the head, for good luck.
Alternately, if you’re writing a structured document (for example a technical book or a research paper), Word (or any WYSIWYG tool) is basically the worst possible tool for planning, organization, editing, and collaboration.
My personal recommendation:
- Compose text using a plain text format like Markdown, reStructuredText, or AsciiDoc. (I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper)
- Use plain text tools for version control and collaboration (for example, git and github).
- If your layout needs are simple, just convert to HTML/ePub/LaTeX/whatever and go
- If your layout needs are more sophisticated and you want something to use snazzy typography, use a real typesetting tool like InDesign
There is literally no circumstance under which Word is the best (or even an adequate) tool for the job, unless a threat of physical force is involved (e.g. an idiot employer demands it, or some terrorists have your family hostage and won’t give them up until you write your paper in Word).
I know what you mean man :D
I have been forced to use Word at work, because they "cannot use LaTex". And yeah, what you say is my experience. But, when you are the one that manages all the things under Word, at the end you will get some reasonable behavior of the software. Anyway, this is not always the case for me. It happened many times that I had to review and fix big documents (reports, books, thesis) written by someone not that good, in Word. That is something that can get you crazy, and... this is how I got my first mech, after ragehitting my desk with my old board! I do not know why the board got destroyed and not the desk, that was my aim...
On the other hand it must be said that Word has really a useful review mode, that make wonders when you are not the only one working on a document.
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On the other hand it must be said that Word has really a useful review mode, that make wonders when you are not the only one working on a document.
Oh god no. Collaborating using MS Word is like having your teeth removed with a chainsaw. (Then again, some people are into that sort of thing, so YMMV.)
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On the other hand it must be said that Word has really a useful review mode, that make wonders when you are not the only one working on a document.
Oh god no. Collaborating using MS Word is like having your teeth removed with a chainsaw. (Then again, some people are into that sort of thing, so YMMV.)
Yeah, that is my feeling every time I use Word. Anyway, have you ever tried the Word review mode? What else you would suggest?
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So.. everyone here seems adept at talking about writing software..
yet.. come the post your writing thread.. every one turns mute..
Everybody loves keyboards, and yet comes time to actually practice typing.. many will suddenly decide 30wpm is Fast Enough, and proceed to buy more ****.. ...
(http://emoticoner.com/files/emoticons/onion-head/hehe-onion-head-emoticon.gif?1292862507)
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At the job I am obligated to use Word 2013 as all the company templates were created in Word, so all technical documentation or SOW's are done in Word. However, personally, I prefer LaTex, I have written my master thesis in LaTex and it looked wonderful (layout wise). No problems with math equations or graphs. All my papers where also done in LaTex, I tried to do a two-column article-style paper in Word with a lot of graphs, but each graph insert messed up my layout. You can get a lot done in Word, but it's would never be my first choice for any serious documentation.
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I wrote a published paper in Word. That review/annotation feature is pretty handy. Not as good as collaborating on Google Docs but it got the job done. I guess I'm not as 1337 as everyone else here :rolleyes:.
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I'm surprised that Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php) hasn't come up yet. It's about forty bucks, but so far it's been worth it.
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I wrote a published paper in Word. That review/annotation feature is pretty handy. Not as good as collaborating on Google Docs but it got the job done. I guess I'm not as 1337 as everyone else here :rolleyes:.
I mean, hey, use whatever works for you.
Personally, I find Google Docs even worse than word, both for composing and typesetting documents, and for collaboration. The only real advantage it has is being online and not requiring any extra software installation. (Don’t get me wrong, that’s a big advantage, and nothing to sneeze at.)
In both Word and Google Docs, I find it extremely hard to keep track of complicated changes coming in from several people, and hard to have structured discussions about particular changes. If all your proofreader/editor needs to do is fix a couple typos and make a small handful of suggestions, they work okay, but as soon as you try to do big reorganizations of text, rewrite a substantial proportion of the sentences, or suggest complicated document-wide changes, especially if there are more than 2–3 people involved in the process, Word and similar tools fall over hard in my experience. Even when individual comments and changes are simple and small, once you get to more than about 20 per page, figuring out which one points where and not missing anything becomes a real pain in the ass.
The times I’ve tried using Word to collaborate with a sizable number of people, because that was the workflow they were used to, I found myself really frustrated. Because different people got different versions of the file, there were many incompatible changes and conflicting comments. Trying to compare them all to each other or figure out how they related was not easy. As far as I can tell there’s no easy way to merge selected changes from multiple people and then “rebase” (to use the git term) new people’s comments onto the new merged document. As a result, much of the discussion actually ended up migrating to chains of emails. So as a result there were ultimately maybe 10–20 different copies of the Word file with different incompatible changes, and a few hundred emails, also with discussion of the same document. Some of the comments from the word sticky note feature ended up duplicated in emails, but other discussions were unique to the sticky notes, or unique to the emails. Sorting it all out was an enormous pain.
Personally, I would find it easier to compare comments written in red pen on a printout and integrate them all manually myself, rather than using Word’s collaboration features.
When I compare with the tools build for collaboration among programmers (version control tools, diff tools, code review tools, etc.) using Word like being stuck in the dark ages. Using programmer-oriented tools involves a steeper learning curve, but ultimately they are an order of magnitude more powerful and efficient, and everything stays much better organized.
I think the biggest advantage/difference between WYSIWYG and plain-text-based formats is that people building tools have a radically easier time interacting with plain text than with proprietary binary blobs. As a result, there is a much wider variety of tools available, supporting a much wider variety of workflows and working styles.
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My personal recommendation:
- Compose text using a plain text format like Markdown, reStructuredText, or AsciiDoc. (I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper)
- Use plain text tools for version control and collaboration (for example, git and github).
- If your layout needs are simple, just convert to HTML/ePub/LaTeX/whatever and go
- If your layout needs are more sophisticated and you want something to use snazzy typography, use a real typesetting tool like InDesign
Interestingly, while this thread was going on, one of the author of "Pro Git" published a blog explaining his entire workflow.
I take it everyone interested in this thread probably wants to read it:
"Living the Future of Technical Writing - The amazing adventures and final toolchain of Pro Git, 2nd Edition"
https://medium.com/@chacon/living-the-future-of-technical-writing-2f368bd0a272 (https://medium.com/@chacon/living-the-future-of-technical-writing-2f368bd0a272)
(link right above hopefully fixed thanks to SpamRay)
The one big difference I see between today and more than ten years ago is that today you'll kinda often want to target both physical books, ebooks, PDFs, Web, etc. So this influences the workflow.
When I compare his workflow to the one I used back in the days, I'm jealous: I'd print the book in full, drop it either at my publisher or directly at the person doing the proof-reading. Then a few days later I'd get the hundreds of sheets of papers back, with corrections in red and I'd painfully enter them page by page in Quark XPress!
I 100% agree with people pointing out here that Word is useless for typesetting. A word processor can be okay as long as you're not the person doing the typesetting but then again if you target books + ebooks / PDFs + HTML you'll need to use something like Markdown or asciidoc and then create or reuse a "workflow" of transformation that suits you.
Guys, you're giving me the envy to start writing books again! :thumb:
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https://medium.com/@chacon/living-the-future-of-technical-writing-2f368bd0a272 (https://medium.com/@chacon/living-the-future-of-technical-writing-2f368bd0a272)
FTFY :thumb:
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As a minor aside, TacticalCoder, the National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org/) is coming up and I think I'm going to do it. Perhaps you can join in on the adventure? I'm probably going to write in Word or Scrivener ;).
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I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper
That's really all I was writing, so that explains why I found LaTeX so handy for it.
I really agree with your workflow. Compose text using the programs designed for it. Collaborate using the systems written for it. Typeset with the programs needed for it. Very much the unix philosophy (every program does one thing and does it well).
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As a minor aside, TacticalCoder, the National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org/) is coming up and I think I'm going to do it. Perhaps you can join in on the adventure? I'm probably going to write in Word or Scrivener ;) .
Oh that sounds great but... I've been writing "computer" books: books about Linux, about programming, etc. So I'm an "author" in that in the past I've been published but... I'm not really an author: I didn't write any fiction / novels. Moreover I'm a native french speaker: it would be really hard for me to write an entire novel in english!
Good luck with your novel and if you finish it, let us know when it is out :thumb:
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I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper
That's really all I was writing, so that explains why I found LaTeX so handy for it.
I think LaTeX is great, it’s just a steeper learning curve than necessary for many purposes. For anything where >20% of the content is formulas, LaTeX is of course the only reasonable choice.
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Oh that sounds great but... I've been writing "computer" books: books about Linux, about programming, etc. So I'm an "author" in that in the past I've been published but... I'm not really an author: I didn't write any fiction / novels. Moreover I'm a native french speaker: it would be really hard for me to write an entire novel in english!
Good luck with your novel and if you finish it, let us know when it is out :thumb:
I'm using the occasion to force myself to write more in general and to try out fiction writing. You could write yours in French of course as I'm sure my French novel would be atrocious :)).
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I wouldn’t recommend using LaTeX for composing text unless you (a) have several years experience with it, or (b) are writing a math or physics paper
That's really all I was writing, so that explains why I found LaTeX so handy for it.
I think LaTeX is great, it’s just a steeper learning curve than necessary for many purposes. For anything where >20% of the content is formulas, LaTeX is of course the only reasonable choice.
I recommend LYX for newbies who are used to a WYSiWYG (or "WYSiWYM" in the case of LYX) but I agree it's not for everyone.
Then again, most everyone doesn't really care enough to look for better answers. They like to say things like: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and try not to think.
Oh that sounds great but... I've been writing "computer" books: books about Linux, about programming, etc. So I'm an "author" in that in the past I've been published but... I'm not really an author: I didn't write any fiction / novels. Moreover I'm a native french speaker: it would be really hard for me to write an entire novel in english!
Good luck with your novel and if you finish it, let us know when it is out :thumb:
I'm using the occasion to force myself to write more in general and to try out fiction writing. You could write yours in French of course as I'm sure my French novel would be atrocious :)).
I wrote a book in French once, called "L'avenir de Sam", it was not good.
If you were to write a beginning reader / early childhood book in french, I could probably read it just fine though.
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As a minor aside, TacticalCoder, the National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org/) is coming up and I think I'm going to do it. Perhaps you can join in on the adventure? I'm probably going to write in Word or Scrivener ;).
More like National I Should Be Writing My Dissertation month.