[Nfb-science] Formatting: An Inquiry of Resources

[Christine Szostak]

Hello,
  Thank you sincerely  for the information and ideas.

  To ensure the discussion does not center on formulas, please allow me to 
make one minor clarification.

  I have been told LaTeX is great for formula insertion as was noted, so I 
am more wondering about non-math-heavy manuscripts. There is occasional need 
in our field, say if developing a mathematical model, for math-heavy 
manuscripts to be generated, but much of my work will likely not center on 
this aspect. Thus, I am wondering if more general formatting makes LaTeX a 
valuable option?

  To answer the question about whether .doc conversion would be necessary, 
according to my advisor, in our area, .doc is often the only version 
accepted for final copy.

Related to my first question as well, is there a way to add comments to 
another's work in LaTeX? When revising drafts, this is frequently how my 
advisor and I interact in word. Thus, I am trying to figure out how this 
would be accomplished as I am assuming this is not possible in most editors 
that work with LaTeX.

  Please know that I really appreciate any information, thoughts, or 
arguments individuals have in favor of or apposed to LaTeX.
Many thanks,
Christine



Christine M. Szostak
Graduate Student
Language Perception Laboratory
Department of Psychology, Cognitive Area
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
szostak.1 at osu.edu
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
To: "NFB Science and Engineering Division List" <nfb-science at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: [Nfb-science] Formatting: An Inquiry of Resources


> Hello,
> Firstly is it worth learning LaTeX? Possibly, the greatest gain I feel is 
> when dealing with mathematical notation but many sighted people still like 
> it for other documents (I think they do tend to be in a more technical 
> field). Eventually it comes down to personal preference, just keep in mind 
> that the initial learning time tends to be longer than for systems like 
> Word.
>
> Now to how you could convert it to word document format. One option would 
> be use mathtype, not really LaTeX, you use word for most of the document 
> and write equations in mathtype (LaTeX input mode being one option in 
> mathtype). Another alternative may be to use a LaTeX to word converter. I 
> don't know any off hand but I am sure google will help here (I don't know 
> much about these and I don't know how well they work).
>
> LaTeX normally produces PDF, are you sure these wouldn't be acceptable? Do 
> you know of any tools which may be could convert PDF to word format?
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 03/22/2010 07:30 PM, Christine Szostak wrote:
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>    I would greatly appreciate if anyone would mind posing any thoughts, 
>> views, or opinions on the below.
>>
>>    I have been wondering whether it is worth learning LaTeX for preparing 
>> manuscripts for scientific journals. I study Psycholinguistics, a subset 
>> of Cognitive Psychology/Cognitive Science. I plan to maintain an active 
>> research program following my grad training. Thus, I was curious if 
>> others here find LaTeX useful or what method you find most helpful for 
>> formatting. In my field, it is typically expected that a manuscript 
>> accepted, in its final version will need to be converted back to .doc. 
>> Thus, if you use LaTeX or other methods, how do you recommend dealing 
>> with this hurdle?
>> With much thanks,
>> Christine
>> Christine M. Szostak
>> Graduate Student
>> Language Perception Laboratory
>> Department of Psychology, Cognitive Area
>> The Ohio State University
>> Columbus, Ohio
>> szostak.1 at osu.edu
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