[Nfb-science] Formatting: An Inquiry of Resources

Tue Mar 23 13:46:03 UTC 2010

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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