[PLUG] A personal milestone

Tim Wescott tim at wescottdesign.com
Mon May 11 19:29:10 UTC 2009


John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Mon, 11 May 2009 10:26:50 -0700
> Tim Wescott <tim at wescottdesign.com> dijo:
>
>   
>> My one published book was done using OpenOffice, also, then sent off to 
>> my publisher who used $$ tools to finish the book.  I did my Master's 
>> thesis using LaTeX.
>>
>> I'm still trying to decide if the versatility and math typesetting 
>> capability of LaTeX is better than the WYSIWYG capability of OOo...
>>
>> Did you consider using LaTeX, and if so why did you choose OOo instead?
>>     
>
> This book was a real saga.
>
> My first book was done in WordPerfect/DOS. I remember spending hours
> and reams of paper printing out each page over and over until I finally
> got things positioned properly.
>
> Then I went to QuarkXPress, then PageMaker, briefly to Ventura, and
> then to InDesign. I have InDesign CS installed on Windows 2000 in
> Virtualbox. Truth be told, I could have done this job in a small
> fraction of the time it took if I had done it in InDesign. But this is
> my first book since moving to Linux four years ago. I was determined to
> do it the FOSS way.
>
> When I first started writing and designing books the term "content" had
> not yet entered the lexicon. Somewhere in the 90s I think it became
> fashionable to think of content as separate from design. I think it was
> the web that brought this about. Whatever, the idea is alien to me. The
> design expresses what I am trying to say as much as the words. Bear in
> mind that all my books are textbooks and workbooks. Not only are there
> lots of graphics, there are no two pages that look alike. 
>
> So when I started this book I decided to do it in OOo. I have been
> using OOo as my only word processor for ten years, long before going to
> Linux. I knew it had the layout power of WordPerfect, plus a GUI. I
> wrote the whole thing and designed it as I went along. But by the time
> I got to the end I was severely frustrated by the bugs. This is the
> first book I have done that needs formulas (really just scalable
> brackets), and the Math module in OOo has so many bugs that it took
> forever to work around all the problems. Plus it was dropping
> characters in the printout - just a general mess. Some may recall my
> asking here for help trying to determine if it was Gnome or Ubuntu or
> OOo, and if I might be able to eliminate the problems by going to an
> older version on a different platform. Eventually I concluded that OOo
> just had to go. It's great for writing ordinary text, but if you need
> its less commonly used features it will probably mess up your work. I'd
> certainly advise staying clear of its Math module.
>
> -- snip
>   
What's really odd is that with around 400 formulas in mine*, you'd think 
that I'd be screaming about the math module, too.   Yet aside from a 
certain clunkiness (what /does/ keep them from just using LaTeX syntax?) 
it worked fine for me.

I did have some problems with non-printing characters -- OOo has a 
problem with minus signs embedded in the text, and when you're writing a 
control systems text you tend to obsess about -1.  This problem 
propagated all the way to the print version (and I haven't been able to 
get them to fix it, @#$%), which makes the book a confusing read in a 
couple of places.

* "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems, Elsevier/Newnes, 2006.

-- 
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
Voice: 503-631-7815
Cell:  503-349-8432
http://www.wescottdesign.com





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