[Nfb-science] Formatting: An Inquiry of Resources

Tue Mar 23 18:40:32 UTC 2010

Hi,
  Thank you, this is exactly the type of information I am interested in. 
This is really helpful and gives me some great food for thought in this 
matter. If others have thoughts, views, recommendations... I would be very 
interested to hear them as well. Thank you for the time with this, it is 
much appreciated.
Many thanks,
Christine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
To: "NFB Science and Engineering Division List" <nfb-science at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 9:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Nfb-science] Formatting: An Inquiry of Resources

> Hello,
> Firstly a conclusion (you can go on and read my more detailed explanation 
> if you want). I get the feeling LaTeX is not such a strong competitor for 
> you as there could be a few extra hoops as it seems most others in your 
> field use word. Also as you aren't making such heavy use of mathematical 
> notation that one big advantage has gone, other formats may be just as 
> good as LaTeX for you. Is there anything specific in word you want to 
> avoid?
>
> So from what I understand about mathtype, it isn't dealing with what you 
> are really wanting to know about, using LaTeX to format a document. As the 
> other options (using normal LaTeX, creating a PDF and converting to word 
> format, or finding a LaTeX to word converter) work in the more standard 
> LaTeX way I will go on and describe that.
>
> You would create a plain text file with a .tex extension (eg. 
> mydocument.tex). In that text file you would write your LaTeX code and the 
> document. When you are ready to create something suitable to submit or to 
> be viewed by a sighted person, you would save the .tex file (you probably 
> or should have been doing this as you went along anyway), and then you go 
> to the command line and run the LaTeX software over it to create a PDF (if 
> you want to use a word converter use that software instead, in my 
> following example I will assume PDF but if you use a word converter it 
> most likely will just be a .doc extension instead). So in the case of the 
> .tex file being called mydocument.tex I will now find another file 
> mydocument.pdf (there may be some extra files which LaTeX created while 
> producing the PDF but we can ignore these in the main). Now you said how 
> could someone add comments back into your document, well that person would 
> need access to the LaTeX source of your document so you probably would 
> need to submit both mydocument.tex and mydocument.pdf. Probably in the 
> case of using a LaTeX to word converter the word document could be altered 
> but this won't show up in the .tex file as the two are not linked in any 
> way. Although there are word to LaTeX converters, I doubt you would want 
> to use the LaTeX output by these, software typically produces very verbose 
> LaTeX to ensure exact formatting is preserved.
>
> Now I will just try and say a few thoughts on which may be better.
> Everyone knows how to use word: May be a slight over statement but what I 
> am getting at is that you are likely to always to be able to get someone 
> who knows enough about word who could help you tweak a document.
>>From what you say, if word is the standard format I would imagine LaTeX
> users may be slightly rare and so you may need to resort to internet and 
> books for help on how to do things.
> Adding comments requires use of LaTeX: Its fully possible to add comments 
> as I note above, however it does require anyone modifying the document to 
> know LaTeX and by the sound of it, in your field few will have that 
> knowledge.
> LaTeX is certainly used for non-mathematical documents: I can think of a 
> number of software groups who have written their manuals using LaTeX (eg. 
> rockbox, python, etc), also I can think of people who tend to write all 
> their documents using LaTeX, its just a different way of working (probably 
> best for you to look around for reasons why people use LaTeX but a couple 
> are: Let's the author concentrate on content rather than appearance and 
> when you know what you are doing possibly quicker as your just typing 
> rather than having to keep opening dialog boxes to specify how to layout 
> things).
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 03/23/2010 04:54 AM, Christine Szostak wrote:
>> 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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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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